No public transport taken, only wine with Nikki Fletcher’s WineTubeMap. Her wine version of the London Tube Map simplifies wine so that people can learn about and enjoy different varieties without getting overwhelmed by the science. She also runs WineTubeMap tastings in Edinburgh. Nikki of Convivium Wine explains: ‘Hop aboard at your local, favourite station and travel along to discover some different wines. The premise is easy, each line is
Do you ever feel like you end up spending more time reading the guide book than you do travelling? Not so with these maps now selling in the Avocado Sweet Shop and published by Herb Lester Associates. Billed as introductions to cities rather than a comprehensive guides, the maps are described as ‘a guide to the usual and the unusual’. For Clandestine London, the publisher has ‘scoured the city for pubs with
Friday 1 June is the closing date for entires to The Balvenie Master of Crafts Awards which champion British craftsmanship. Winners receive not only recognition but a programme of practical support in promoting their creations. There are awards in the categories of wood, glass and ceramics, textiles, leather, stone and – new for 2012 – food. There is also a Young Master Award and one for Lifetime Achievement. Judges include
No need to start hunting for the pile of allen keys in your man drawer. Ikea is doing the building this time. The Swedish furniture giant is creating its first neighbourhood in Britain. LandProp Holding, Ikea’s real estate development arm is developing a 26-acre canal-side site near the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London. Strand East will have 1,200 new homes, nearly half will be family homes, with three
Opening this weekend at St Andrews Museum in Fife is SJ Peploe: the French Connection, an exhibition which demonstrate the influence of France and French painting on the famous Scottish Colourist’s work. Samuel Peploe was born in Edinburgh in 1871. He studied art in his home city as well as in Paris. Along with contemporaries such as Fergusson, Cadell and Hunter, he took many painting trips to France where, inspired
From Swiss design agency This Made comes this sleek, Mac shaped chopping board. It’s made from oiled, food safe apple wood (appropriately enough) and comes in a range of sizes. It will probably outlast the product it’s modelled on and only time will tell which proves more useful in the long run! Prices start at about £50 for the 13 inch.
Unlike the rest of us, Lauren Kobilnyk and Ross Macauley haven’t left their photo collection languishing on a memory card or cluttering up their computer. The Dunfermline based pair have set up Jewel in her Crown which sells these superb silk scarves, digitally printed with polaroid style photographs. Lauren says, ‘We’ve been really please with the positive feedback our first collection has generated. To have orders come in from people
Louise Belcourt paints hedges. Canada is not necessarily a country you’d associate with hedges but apparently the hedges are monumental.Belcourt spends every summer in a remote small Canadian village called Metis-sur-Mer in north eastern Quebec where she paints these huge green boundaries. Belcourt now lives in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, New York where she moved in 1984 before it was trendy or you could buy groceries easily but she
One of the best sites on the whole damn internet is Shaun Usher’s Letters of Note, a collection of letters ranging from the wise to the witty, the mad to the moving. Among the selection of over 700 letters are words of advice from fathers to their sons, from presidents to their people and from the successful to the aspiring. There are also full throttled rants at injustices, real or
Sometimes referred to as an ’embassy for Scottish art’, The Fleming Collection in London’s Mayfair is reputedly the most significant collection of Scottish art in private hands, comprising over 750 oils and watercolours from 1770 to the present. There are Raeburns, McTaggarts, works by the Glasgow Boys and the Colourists – including the Cadell above – and an ongoing programme of acquisitions focuses in particular on young Scottish artists. The Collection’s