Fascinating interiors fact*: Chancellor George Osborne has had his budget box lined with this Ginevra wallpaper from the family firm’s recent Grand Tour collection.

Osborne and Little describe the origin of the Grand Tour on their website: ‘Three hundred years ago, wealthy young Englishmen began taking a post-Oxbridge trek through France and Italy in search of art, culture and the roots of Western civilization. With nearly unlimited funds, aristocratic connections and months (or years) to roam, they commissioned paintings, perfected their language skills and mingled with the upper crust of the Continent’.

Whatever may have happened to a price of fags by lunchtime today, I admit that O&L do lots of nice wallpaper, including the one wot graces my own bedroom. If I had any more space in the house – say a gentleman’s dressing room, or a butler’s parlor – I might consider these serious-looking storks, also from the Grand Tour collection.

*But don’t quote us on it

(Double) Fantasy room

After Leonard Cohen’s Greek house, another room from popular culture I love is the one John and Yoko are in for the Imagine video. Amazing proportions and pure white, it is perfect for the simple concept of the video, whereby Yoko walks round opening the huge shutters, letting in more and more light as the […]

Pretty Street

Just started reading another book I was given for my birthday this year, The Street Art Stencil Book by art direction agency ON.Studio. I have it on authority from my Norwegian gift-giving friend that street art is big news in Stavanger just now. Have you ever been to Stavanger? It’s no Hoxton, so the street […]

Question…

Wicker fan chairs? Ripe for a revival or terminally 70s? I ask because there are two for sale in the junk shop on the corner. They remind me of the flats of my mum’s single girl friends when I was a kid, where I hankered after their spider plants in macrame hammocks, and gonks and […]

Paper, scissors, stone

Tamasyn Gambell, David David, Design Bark and just about everything in Darkroom – there’s been much talk of geometrics and prismatic shapes  here at My Friends House lately. Here’s another name to add to the list: Nuria Mora, a Madrid-based artist who recently created this exhibition stand. Would you look at that origami wave coming out the top? Now that’s […]