Zenith

I was at a fun session last night on styling living and dining rooms at Freedom. One of our teachers is an interior designer for Freedom and has a lot of experience in merchandising. Although I was listening in class my eyes were wandering and spotted this little desk lamp which has very pleasing proportions and is reasonably priced at $99. There is also a standard lamp in a similar design.

Image: Freedom

Back to my desk

I started back to school yesterday - first day of my Interior Styling course and the last six months of my two year project to get myself some qualifications in interior design. Seems like we have a great group in the class and lots of young talent so I am excited to see the designs everyone will come up with through the course.

I thought this was an interesting take on the home office / library. I love the shining black floor and the detail in the library glazing. Our study at home is still in 'keep the door closed to hide the mess' mode - a bit of transparency might be just the thing to get me organised !

Image: Douglas Friedman

Light storage

I have posted about Vitsoe in the past here and love to find applications of this iconic storage system that I haven't come across before. This home is in California and the owner's goal was to have a home with storage and light. Such a great idea I am thinking that this could also be a way of screening a not so great view eg a side fence or something but still letting the light in.

Images: Home Beautiful

Desk organiser

As I write this my keyboard is sitting on our 'temporary' desk which we have now had for three years. It is actually not too bad -its a full size plain interior door on legs which as its so long can seat two people comfortably. As the study is still in 'temporary' mode it is also the house dumping ground and holding area, which always happens I find if a room is half done. We long for the day when we have organised the study and put in proper cabinetry like this. The side shelves look like Vitsoe shelving which I love and have written about here before.

A friend said to me once though - if you want to live minimally you need somewhere you can stash things until you've got them organised or thrown them away, so I wonder how we will manage when we no longer dump everything in the study . . .

Image: via Habitually Chic

Clarissa Hulse

Clarissa Hulse www.clarissahulse.com is a British designer of fabrics, wallpapers and homewares. Many are based on a botanical theme and her colour palette ranges from very classic and beautiful naturals to a riot of colour and contrast.

Some of her designs are available here in Australia through The Selvedge Group. There is also a range of limited edition refurbished and reupholstered furniture available in the UK. My favourite is the blue chair in the first picture below.

Clarissa Hulse's own home has been widely featured in the media in Europe and I have included a few shots below. Love the study nook and the dining chairs (which look very like my favourites from Pols Potten). Finally I would also draw your attention to the colour palettes section of her website for more inspiration.

Mighty Expedit-y

You come across stats from time to time about IKEA - the huge numbers of people who sleep in IKEA beds etc etc. Well I can safely say that at least 80% of my friends own an Expedit shelving system (especially those with small children). I am thrilled to see this new desk attachment as we are about to move ours from the living room to one of my sons bedrooms and this little desk (top is 115 x 78 cm) is perfect for them. I am assuming you can attach it to any point on the shelves - mine is a 5 x 5 but will be racing off to confirm soon. PS: its AU$129 - how could you go wrong ?

Image: IKEA

Study style

Still contemplating ideas for our study - to go dark or not that is the question . . . My house is all painted an antiquey white and while the neutrals are lovely I am itching to differentiate some rooms. But I also want to able to work in the study - so how would the light feel if I put in dark bookshelves. The debate continues.

Image: Ryan Corban via Desire to Inspire

Coast

I am a bit stress-rich and time-poor this week so not much time to write. So I am turning to another beautiful Rachel Whiting photograph for todays post. Who wouldn't feel calm at this desk ?

Image: Rachel Whiting

Portobello belle

This is the home of an Irish architect and designer Sibeal O'Sullivan. It was featured in Image Interiors in 1997 and I kept the whole thing - I love this house. My home town - Dublin - has a wealth of beautiful period Georgian and Victorian homes. While as a renovation project they can be a big challenge their lovely bones usually mean that the outcome is more than worth the effort and expense. This is a renovated and extended 4 bed Victorian house.

On one side the house is open from front to back.

Lovely study library in the middle

Leading to great family kitchen

Now on the left above is one of my favourite features - a TV den or snug is boxed away by itself so that the kids can watch tv. I am not a tv lover myself so this would be a big bonus. You can see in the photo below that the tv room is lit by internal windows and there is good hidden storage. Like the modern lamp / old sofa combination too.

House connects with outside

Beautiful bannister

Master bedroom ticks lots of boxes - window, fireplace, chest of drawers, mix of restful textures.

Pretty good guest room . . .

Images: Sibeal O'Sullivan www.sosullivandesign.com , Image Interiors Photos Graham Atkins

Wine and wire

I have a couple of posts to write about steel reinforcing mesh. Hmmm I hear you say, but bear with me. Firstly it has come to my attention that steel mesh is being used to great and sometimes dramatic effect to store wine. The wine rack below is from the restaurant Bells at Killcare on the New South Wales central coast.


The mesh is inexpensive relative to other racking options and you just simply attach it to the wall or between posts or pillars depending on your room or storage area.

This wine cellar / study below uses the same approach in the Australian home of a designer for the film industry. Although I know from the magazine article that this is the home office of a female, many men I know would love to hole up in this study surrounded by 1500 bottles of wine.

Images: www.killcarebells.com.au, Mistah, Home Beautiful

Vitsoe: 606 Universal Shelving System

Vitsoe provide pretty much the best customer service and love of a product I have come across so far - in any retail sector.

My husband spotted the 606 in the Conran shop's staff offices when we were living in London and looking for shelves and a spot for our computer and so we discovered Vitsoe. The 606 shelving system was designed by Dieter Rams in the early 1960s and Vitsoe has been producing this high end modular system for over 50 years. They are a really interesting company focussed on timeless design that can be reused, added to and adjusted as you move house and your lifestyle changes. You can get a much better idea of what they are about at www.vitsoe.com.

The customer service is amazing - you are advised on which type of installation suits your home and application, beautiful drawings are emailed to you and kept on file so that your system can be amended at a later date and - when we moved to Australia they came and lovingly disassembled our shelves and packed them for overseas shipment pretty much for the cost of the packaging.

The shelves can be wall mounted, used as room dividers, floor mounted or compressed between the ceiling and the floor. A look through the Vitsoe site will show you the extent of what can be done with the 606. Mud Australia http://www.mudaustralia.com/ are the distributors for Vitsoe in Australia.

Images: NY Spaces Magazine via www.desiretoinspire.blogspot.com , www.vitsoe.com

Donna Karan desk

This photo is from Donna Karan's New York apartment. Supporting structures like this are often a nuisance but this cantilevered desk idea is very clever. I am not a fan of tvs in bedrooms so I would have left the column plain and streamlined and wouldn't have included the little tv screen.

Image: The Sunday Times

I picked up this photo in a UK newspaper some years ago and am not sure who took the photo. It may well have been Richard Powers who has taken a beautiful series of pictures of the rest of this amazing apartment. His photos have been posted on a number of blogs - most of them can be seen at http://yatzer.com/postDetails.php?post=1151

Kitchen workstation

We need our laptops in the kitchen or nearby to keep an eye on kids online or in my case watch the kids, check email, cook dinner etc etc at the same time. I like this design for a number of reasons. High on my list is that the chair looks good and looks fit for purpose. The desk matches the bench top in the adjoining kitchen and using the space right beside the window gives the person sitting there a view to the garden.

Image: source not known

Favourite rooms: reading retreat

This is a great little room and it must be in my folder a very long time - look at the computer !!! Lots of houses have these box rooms which are ok for a small child for a few years but then what do you do with it ? I am always looking for attractive book storage and I think this little retreat is a great use of the space. With an updated Mac I could settle myself in here no bother.

Favourite rooms - study

This is an old tear sheet from my folder - maybe from about three years ago. The things I still really like about this room are - the blind fabric (Manuel Canovas) , the wall colour, the rack at the back of the desk to hide wires and hold things and the elegant office chair. It's hard to find a comfortable yet elegant desk chair and I love the twisted arms on this one that make it that little bit different.

Image: Homes and Gardens UK

Justine Smith

With so much focus on global financial markets at the moment I was reminded of Justine Smith's work which I bookmarked some time ago. She works with paper and especially with banknotes. Her website http://www.justinesmith.net explains how her work is an exploration of our relationship with money and our response to it, in a political, moral and social sense, whilst also exploiting the physical beauty of the notes. I think the European map is a wonderful reminder for those of us who lived in and travelled around Europe before the euro when the 'different money' in each of the countries was part of the whole experience. A great print for the study or for the foreign exchange trader in your life.

Images: Justine Smith www.justinesmith.net