Bits & Pieces

A few little things that caught my eye over the last few days, not enough for a full post each, so I thought I’d add them all together.

First up… I just finished the Duchess book, so when I saw this advert at Stubbs & Wootton, I laughed aloud!You can see the Duchess in the little boat with her pugs, and the Duke in his plus fours, with a pair of Stubbs & Wootton’s on. This particular pair has a shark’s jaw with a cornet in the center. There are a few “inside” jokes in this little watercolour: The Duke was responsible for introducing plus fours to America in 1924, in the pre-Wallis days. The Duke and Duchess also had a long history of mooching in Palm Beach, so this is particularly funny. I love the style of these little paintings!

I have worn S+W shoes for years, and they are soooo comfortable. They come in loads of fun patterns and prints and beautiful colours. Check them out here.

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I received an e-mail from Liberty of London the other day with their Spring/Summer line of fabrics. Some of them were designed by Vivienne Westwood, antiques guru Martin Miller and students at Central St. Martin’s. I loved this print, taken from a library at Glencot House in Somerset England.  Here’s the library,

and here’s the print.Martin Miller, author of Miller’s Guide to Antiques, has this great dragon pattern taken from the Liberty archives, with additions from his collections.To watch a film about the new collection, click here. But beware, there’s a lot of background noise and the narrator’s hard to understand at times.

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I have two bathrooms at the new house (when does it stop being new?) and the ground floor one is very plain. I have my bike and the hoover hiding in the shower, and a lovely linen shower curtain. I also have some curtains in Schumacher’s Fireworks print in a great mandarin colour. I had planned to paper the walls with the Turgot Plan de Paris, but it was too hard to match up and when I had a small leak after Hurricane Irene, the ink bled.

When I found some old French novels at Book Thing a few months ago, I had a thought of papering the loo walls with their pages. It took until this week to finally start this project, and it’s turning out rather well. I am applying the pages to the wall with ModPodge, and just painting the wall with it, and not painting over the pages. If and when I decide to change the décor, all I will need to do is wash down the walls to loosen the adhesive. The book is Le Mannequin D’Osier, or the wicker-work woman. It was published in 1897 and the volume I have is the 25th edition.  Here’s a brief summary of the book, translated from the original French. It’s quite a well-known book in France and there’s even a 1980’s movie of the same name. It seems to be about a professor whose wife has an affair with one of his students. I think.It’s always fun to see what people do with small bathrooms where there’s lots of room for creativity in a small space.