I managed to escape few hours from Tent on saturday to walk around what they call the Shoreditch Design triangle (between Great Eastern St-Shoreditch High St and Old St).
This is my selection from Tramshed:
Studioilse by Isle Crawford.
I love the copper details on the legs of the stool.
Falcon enamel pie dishes and cups.
Donna Wislon at SCP.
Derek Wilson ceramics seen at Origin.
We're back home, happy and exhausted from our week in London. We've been part of Tent in East London which is part of London's Design Week. The show was a great success, and I think this year the work on display was truly impressive. I have selected a few of my picks below.
It was the first time we exhibited at the show and we were really excited to be part of it. We had very positive reactions for the new products that we were showing (wallpaper, tea towels, tapes and laser cut of Paris, London and NYC).
Alp is a design studio led by swiss born, London based interior architect Annick L Petersen.
Roussel is an innovative British design and manufacturing brand created by 2 brothers Anthony and Benjamin Roussel. All Roussel designs are British made, sourcing the skills of some of the finest craftsmen. Presented here are the Louis reading lamp and Ligne stools.
Count on Me chair by Cyprus designer Eva Korae.
Sarah Newman from Design Bark, hand screen print bright colours and funky shapes on wood veneer to create stunning lampshades.
I loved the Origamis Hunter lampshades from Sistudio. They were designed by Chilean Industrial Designer Verónica Posada.
Hand made ceramic cups and saucers by Yasmin Dilekkaya and Ming Wai Sun. The pair studied together and decided to create Yas-Ming Ceramics after they graduated from the University for the Creative Arts in Rochester.
Beautiful ceramics designed by Bodo Sperlein for the Japanese Nikko company.
More picks will follow...
It will be very warm this weekend in Paris so we're going to drive to the seaside in Normandie and make sand castles with the children!
Enjoy your weekend.
I'm off to London tomorrow to set up our stand at Tent design show at the Truman Brewery in East London.
Tent London is one of the largest design trade shows taking place during the London Design Festival each September.
Tent London presents over 200 international exhibitors, showing the very latest in contemporary interior products - furniture, lighting, ceramics, textiles, materials and accessories
The show is open to trade, press, public and students so if you are in the area come to say hello. We'd love to meet you! We will be in Hall 1, stand F20.
Here are some images of our new products presented at Tent: Un Dimanche à Paris wallpaper, tea towels, tapes, new colours for the City maps and laser cuts of Paris, London and NYC!
The show starts on Thursday 23rd, ends on Sunday 25th September.
If you can't make it to the show we will be launching our new products soon on our website...
Parisian label Adonde mixes natural material with bright colours and the results are striking. I love the small faceted cardboard basket to empty all the little bits on your desk.
The name of the company Y'a Pas Le Feu Au Lac, is based on a French expression, means “no need to rush”. The company arose from the meeting between husband and wife team Grégory and Marie BODEL and FX Balléry, designer (graduate from the Royal College of Art).
Their passion for creation, their love of wood as well as their Jura origins (The Jura is located on the East part of France) gathered them around a common project: to create a French brand of wooden contemporary, useful and elegant objects and small pieces of furniture.
On Friday I went to visit Maison & Objet (the international trade show for interior design and home accessories) in the north of Paris. The show is spread over 8 massive halls and you need at least 2 full days to cover the whole event.
Over the next week or so I will show you my selection of designers/products that really caught my eyes.
Today I will start with Danish designer Pernille Snedker Hansen from Snedker studio. She presented Marbelous Wood at the show. She uses the old technique of marbling giving wood a supernatural, organic, colorful and vibrant pattern. Each board is made by hand and you can order Marbelous Wood for the grand floor design or the vibrant wall display in your interior project or private home.
You can also purchase one-off marbling prints hand printed by Pernille Snedker Hansen.
We just spent a fantastic weekend in Lille, celebrating our wedding anniversary and visiting the Braderie de Lille.
For those that don't know, the Braderie is an enormous flea market festival dating back to the 12th Century that takes over the entire city. It's the largest in Europe.
It is a fabulous mix of antique furniture, objet d'art, bric a brac and ephemera. The whole event has a wonderful festival spirit - which even a little rain this morning failed to dampen.
Every festival in France has - as you might expect - a gastronomic backbone, and what I love is that it is always so proudly regional. The Braderie is no exception with every restaurant, cafe and bar turning over the regular menu to serve solely Moules Frites (mussels and fries) accompanied by the finest local and Belgian beers. Stacks of mussel shells form impromptu art installations within the main eating quarters.
The surprise of the weekend was to find just how beautiful this city is. It's the fourth largest in France (behind Paris, Lyon and Marseilles) and has a medieval history. The architecture shows the best of this part of Europe - tall houses with shutters and iron features (similar to Holland and Belgium) with many cobbled roads called pavé (which remind me so much of the famous cycling races of this region!). Today, Lille is a very popular university city, so the population is young and there really creative feel about the place.
Our top 5 things about Lille :
1. Of course the Braderie, which you really must put in your calendar to visit at least once!
2. Meert. We had a late breakfast lunch in this fantastic shop/cafe/restaurant.
3. The beautiful houses in the Vieux Lille (that's old town Lille). Charles de Gaulle was born here (his home is now a museum).
4. Le Merveilleux, home of the best chocolate/meringue combo you'll ever taste.
5. The moules-frites and beer. You'll definitely reach your limit by the end, but it's fun to enjoy this local tradition - the beers really are wonderful, if a little strong!
There were so many things that we didn't get to see: the Vielle Bourse, local parks and the neighbouring Roubaix to name a few, but we'll definitely be back here again one day very soon.
I spent a part of the summer holidays, in our family home in the South West of France, discovering old boxes full of precious family collections. While rifling through an old wooden box I found a stunning collection of old Paris Match magazines dating between 1950 and 1970!
I found this wonderful illustration from the 1960s which gently mocks the French tradition of holidays; Parisians stuck in endless traffic jams following their neighbours across the country to arrive back in Paris for La Rentrée.
There is no specific equivalent English word for 'rentrée'....a tradition so firmly French, best described as the start of the year - when we return from the long French holidays, refreshed and enthused to recommence work and for our children to start the new school year.
Oh, and thankfully now we have wonderful Autoroutes (motorways)!
We're enjoying a lovely time with the family in the South West of France. The cousins are happy playing together and I'm delighted to switch off from my computer!
I'll be back soon with lots of exciting new product images: wallpaper, tea towels and the new map of San Francisco...
We're very excited to show you the new Sky Blue colour. The map size is 50x70cm and is available on Famille Summerbelle website.
So the last couple of weeks have been a mix of holiday and working. We've tried to keep the morning time for work (for which we take turns) and then some good ol' family time in the afternoon.
Most of my work is really not worth sharing (although some of my time has been working on a new website for Famille Summerbelle which you'll see very soon!), but for Julie work time usually means something new and exciting.
She has definitely not disappointed on this trip...! We thought you might like a little sneak preview.
If you follow the blog regularly you'll have seen the shout out for contributions (landmarks, favourite places etc) to our map of San Francisco. Well, here are a few images. It's far from finished, but you can see just how great it is going to be....
We've had so much fun, remembering our favourite places, researching new and interesting places and then learning everybody else's top tips. A total joy.
Thanks to all for the shared comments/tips on the blog. You have definitely made the map more interesting! If you're interested in being amongst the first to have one, then just visit our website and join the friends @ Famille Summerbelle!
I'm loving anything with flowers at the moment. Thanks to Urban & Outfitters I've got plenty to choose from.
Seen on Bloesem blog.
Have a lovely weekend!
Thanks to Swiss Petit Voyou magazine for the lovely article on the history of Famille Summerbelle in French and our Family Trees.
Check their website for lots inspirational activities to do with your child, make your own rainbow ice cream, discover the Rainbow city in NYC and many more...
This is Ophelia & Lucien's favourite activity during the holidays...and always such fun for us too! Everywhere you go in France you'll find a carousel, and it's always a particular pleasure to discover beautiful old ones like these. It makes me laugh so much when the crazy screams begin on first view, and then of course big tears (particularly for Lucien) when we have to go.
Tsé Tsé & Associées by French designers Catherine Levy et Sigolène Prébois have opened a shop in 7 Rue Saint Roch in the 1st Arrondissement. It's full of surprises, bright colours and quirky objets.
Coral & Tusk designer and founder Stephanie Housley has launched a new impressive collection of delicate embroideries on pillows (check the hidden pocket), baby slippers, cardigan and felt.
First I want to thank all of you who left comments on the San Francisco post (see below). It is so helpful for my research while I'm drawing the map. I have already included a lot of your recommendation on the map. I'm half way through the drawing process - hoping to start cutting it the next week or so.
For now I'm very excited to show you the new colour (Turquoise) and size (50x70cm) of the London map. We've made the map size larger to make it easy to frame it as it now fits the standard frame size from Ikea, Habitat and other high street framers.
The London Red print is currently out of stock, but will be back for dispatch on 1st August!
Summer for the last couple of years has meant a new Famille Summerbelle map...this year is no different.
For all of our maps we've picked cities that have a special place in our heart. So this time...San Francisco. Between work trips and holidays we've had some lovely times in and around the city, plus for the last couple of years Julie's brother has lived just outside of town (working at Stanford Uni).
So, Julie is underway drawing out a map with all the major sites and our favourite picks. We just thought it'd be great fun to ask all of you guys....what do you love about San Francisco?
What are your favourite places to visit in San Francisco - perhaps something or somewhere a little less known (a local secret)?
A shop, a restaurant, a landmark, a statue.....please tell us your favourites and we'll add them to the map!
To make it really worth your while, we'll give away 3 signed copies of the finished San Francisco print to our favourite contributions. Just leave your suggestions in the comments below (and if we need to get more details on location we'll contact you back!).
Please please tell your friends - we'd love to get as many contributions as possible. It makes it much more fun for us - and I'm certain we'll have a great map. You can just click one of the share buttons (twitter, facebook etc) to pass the word on!
New pretty designs by Darling Clementine. I love the mix of orange, pink, dark blue and petroleum blue.
Enjoy your weekend!
