Art & Design

Dalton Ghetti – the God of small (pencil tip) things

Using just a razor blade and a needle, and without the aid of a magnifying glass, Brazilian born carpenter Dalton Ghetti exquisitely sculpts the graphite tips of pencils. The work is painstaking: he took over two years to complete the alpahabet pictured above. But for Ghetti this is part of the charm.  In a world where people want everything 'fast, fast, fast' he hopes his miniature works may encourage them

Clootielugs – little birds big on charm

We fell for these sweet little birds, with their washing machine copper wire legs and reclaimed textile bodies, last week at The Pittenweem Arts Festival. At only £10 each, they were flying out of the shop on tiny felt wings.     Jill Kitson is the artist and maker behind the Fife based label Clootielugs. A graduate of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, these days Jill loves

Bloomsbury on the Hudson

If you didn’t know already that Scots born singer Angela McCluskey was a colourful character, a peek inside the jewel bright home she shares with film composer husband Paul Cantelon would soon tell you. The couple live in a riot of Bloomsbury-esque colour in this lovely New York loft overlooking the Hudson which very much reflects their vibrant and creative personalities. The lady of the house, Angela. Many thanks to

Let's talk trash

It’s not all rubbish in the world of bins you know. There’s some good stuff out there. What do you think of these daft refuse sacks, £10 from Suck UK? And for some killer bin style check out these bad boys by Wesco, £166 and £213 from Only-retro-bins. Funny how often a search for the stylish and the practical ends up with the old fashioned. Here’s a great looking old

Pattern: Stripes

Is there anything that can’t be improved by the addition of a stripe? This hammock is £55 from Deckchair Stripes, a company with an exceptional dedication to the stripe. Everything they produce from aprons to beach tents is striped in a fantastic range of colourways. The limited edition Kenwood Mixer, £469.99 from Amazon – why can’t all kitchen apppliances be this bright and beautiful? For wall to wall stripieness: this

Camping it up

So T in the Park has come round again: part music festival part survivalist challenge, it’s become a rite of passage for teenagers and would be teenagers across Scotland. If you are heading to Kinross this weekend ready to rough it, how about rocking up with one of these spectacular tents? Beyonce may have one the same… The Bubble Lodge by Pierre Stephane Dumas is an inflatable, see through affair

About as much use as a chocolate Tea Pot

Products are increasingly made from unlikely materials; bicycles carved from mahagony, toilets built from poo, bridges constructed with cardboard, bathmats made from moss and sun loungers made from cork.  It’s quite possible that a designer is probably already working on a tea pot made from chocolate that doesn’t melt. Designers have risen to the sustainability challenge by recycling products from all sorts of materials that don’t appear fit for purpose but

The colourful world of Nathalie Lete

Welcome to the brightly coloured and slightly off kilter world of Nathalie Lete. In her workshop in Paris Nathalie uses different techniques and media from illustration and painting to ceramics and textiles. She describes her work as ‘naive and poetic’. She produces children’s and graphic books, knitted toys, painted dishes and rugs and her work is stocked in outlets around the world including, in the UK, Anthropologie, Couverture, Lapin and

Lloyd Loom: weaving its way around the world again

David Breese, a Lincolnshire furniture maker, started out restoring and selling pre-war original Lloyd Loom furniture.  When it became difficult to source sufficient good quality originals to meet growing demand  he decided to manufacture himself. In 1985 he began researching the techniques and  trained his workers until he had a skilled staff expert in the craft that had originally been learnt in 1920 when the process was invented. There was