Coming soon to Graham and Green is this Lemonade Bottle Top Clock.
Yes, it is a clock designed to look like a vintage bottle top with scalloped edges, but I think it just about stays the right side of novelty. The clock face is green and has a worn appearance that adds to the shabby chic look.
It costs £25 and can be pre-ordered now, for delivery in late December, probably too late for it to be a Christmas gift. Order it online from Graham and Green.
Type is a design shop based in London’s East End, that sells an intriguing mixture of fashion and interior design items. The Brownie Light is one of their bestselling products and it is not hard to see why.
The light has been created by taking a vintage brownie camera and adding a bulb in the place where the lens normally goes. The result is an unusual piece that will particularly appeal to photography fans, but equally to anyone who likes to see vintage items put to new uses.
The Brownie Light costs £120. Visit the Type website for contact detail and store opening times.
The delightfully named Eclectic Chair is upholstery expert, Heather Linnitt, who offers a revamping service that will give a new lease of life to tired old chairs, sofas and footstools.
Heather loves 50s and 60s furniture, vintage fabric, Orla Kiely and Paul Smith designs, so loves to incorporate these inspirations into her upholstery projects. She is based in Leeds, so offers her services anywhere in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, although will consider work from elsewhere. Prices start from £40 for a simple recover of a drop in seat dining chair, up to £1000 for a large sofa, but in the first instance, she asks people to drop her line with a photograph of the piece of furniture and from there she will help you find the ideal covering for it.
For more information including photographs of other pieces she has done, visit the Eclectic Chair website.
There seems to be a growing number of websites offering big discounts to registered customers. As well as Dotmaison’s Group Buy scheme and Made, ACHICA offers luxury brands at low prices exclusively for its members, which this week includes iconic designs from CLC Living, such as this Union Jack Chest of Drawers.
The chest is design in the classic French style, and finished with a Union Jack pattern with an antique finish. I’ve seen similar products, but what is special here is the price – reduced from £645 to £299 if you register (its free) and order soon.
For details of how to sign up and buy this and other CLC designs at bargain prices, visit the ACHICA website.
Add some French chic to your coat racks with these Paris Fashion coat racks available from the Dotcomgiftshop.
They're made from a very simple wooden plaque with metal coat hooks. The 'Paris fashion' description relates to the panel in the centre of each plaque. These feature 1950s-style fashion illustrations, showing mannequins, frocks and accessories. Available in red, yellow or blue, each colour of coat rack features a different design. The wood has also been given a distressed look to match the vintage style of the illustrations.
Each coat rack costs £12.95.
Buy them online
Photowall has a range of retro wallpapers that you would have to be pretty brave to use as even restricted to a feature wall, they make a bold statement.
Helpfully, the site has computer generated images of each wallpaper design in various rooms, so you can see how it might look in different settings, although noticeable all of these rooms lean towards minimalism. Pictured here is the design they simply call Retro – Orange, which I’m sure is pretty similar to a pair of curtains we had back in the Seventies, so have a soft spot for (although I think I might tire of it quickly looking at it every day). Other designs include concentric hexagons, curved corners squares, diamond shapes and other psychedelic styles, all in bright or strong colours.
Whereas most wallpaper is sold by the roll, Photowall sells its designs by the square metre so you can order exactly how much you need for your wall. Designs in the retro collection cost either Euros 21 per m² or Euros 24 per m². Visit the Photowall website to see the whole collection.
