TOP FIVE (ACTUALLY SIX): High Chairs
THE HIGH CHAIR seems to have become a vehicle for manufacturers and retailers to charge hundreds of pounds for what is usually a joyless and necessary purchase. (Where’s the fun in buying something that will end up daubed in dried food deposits?) The following are neither joyless, nor completely outrageously priced high chairs that seem to offer solutions to the hard-to-clean, unattractive, non-décor enhancing feeding chairs littering high street stores and homes. In fact our top marks go to Lula Sapphire’s K2 by Kuster - for its foldability, its detachable tray (not everyone has a dining table or wants to feed in the dining room), and mostly its price-point. Click on the pictures below to enlarge.
Best for Classicists and older kids: Stokke’s Tripp Trapp. Okay, so it’s a little ubiquitous now, but that’s because the Tripp Trapp goes with most decors, and lasts until your child, is ooh, an adult, if they’re so inclined. The down sides are having to buy separate accessories, which bumps up the price, and a lack of tray, which generally means more fallout on clothing and floors unless you have a table handy. Lovely new colours. From £115 - £165, Stokke, www.stokke.com; 0800 051 7036 (UK).
Posted 21 October 2008 in Eating / Drinking, Furniture
Organic PJs: Gossypium
FINDING NON-CARTOONY, non-itchy, non-nylon-y pyjamas is one of this writer’s holy grails. Once kids grow out of cutesy babygrows, they’re nigh on impossible to find. Certainly Nula Shearing of Noolibird, the Lewes-based textiles design company, whose mother Anne Kennedy originally founded the famous Clothkits DIY clothing brand in the 1970s, Read the rest of this article
Posted 8 October 2008 in Textiles
KIDS’ ROOMS: How Eco Can You Go?
JILL MACNAIR DELVES INTO THE NOT-SO-CLEAR WORLD OF ECO DECORATION.
IN A WORLD where we worry enough during pregnancy to cut out certain (sometimes delicious) foods from our diets to improve our babies’ chances of a healthy start; where we try to stick to an all-organic diet - pregnant or not; and where we have a healthy paranoia about global warming, decorating our childrens’ bedrooms in an eco-friendly way is just another way to clean up our acts. But just how far can you go now?
There are various good choices you can make, but also some limits to be aware of. Take wallpaper. According to Olli & Lime director Karen Ronneback, “our wallpapers are printed on paper from certified sustainable forests and at the moment, that’s the greenest paper you can use - you can’t print onto recycled paper yet.” All of the designs, including the super-cute Carrie, are screen-printed using water-based inks. Minimoderns too uses this combination of FSC certified paper and chemical-free inks, as does Graham & Brown for its Eco-wallpapers collection, which are also packaged in a compostable corn material. Amelie Labarthe’s Eco Highway design is our favourite for children. Read the rest of this article
Posted 17 September 2008 in Decor, Design + Decoration
Wallpaper For Kids That’s Not Exactly Just For Kids
STEFAN BOUBLIL, co-director of The Apartment, the New York interior / graphic design company, doesn’t believe in saccharine, non-challenging visual habitats for children. Take his usage of Timorous Beasties’ Euro Damask paper on the walls of his five-year-old son Zoel’s New York City loft bedroom.
It couldn’t get any more challenging and adult than the edgy Scottish design duo who mix natural and Gothic influences to produce end results like Devil Damask - a traditional lace with a Devil’s face hidden in the weave - or the infamous Glasgow Toile - a print that resembles historic French toile, but hides low-life city scenes instead. And yet, explains Boublil, “In a society in which more and more is done to ‘protect’ children to a fault, they are growing up unable to view the so-called dirty side of life.”
His solution? “I thought that Rorschach [the ink blot guy] had a great way of getting around the would-be thought dictators of our time: the power of imagination. What better gift to give a child than the ability for him or her to fire off a million different thoughts every morning and night, be they scary, soothing or, why not, erotic in nature. The idea of independence can be nurtured from birth and it made all the sense in the world to start with a non-verbal method to communicate it.”
Anyway, word is his son likes it too.
* Timorous Beasties Euro Damask wallpaper, £75 a roll www.timorousbeasties.com; The Apartment, www.theapt.com
Posted 2 September 2008 in Decor, Design + Decoration
CULT ITEM: Casalino Jnr
THE PANTON Jnr chair has a new rival. Except that the less easily recognisable, but equally iconic, Casalino Jnr chair from German design company Casala isn’t really new.
First designed in 1970 by Alexander Begge (the Casalino was his only famed creation), the award-winning stacking chair died out in the 80s due to rising costs in oil. But now it’s back. With a brand new contemporary table to accompany it - designed by Hamburg-based regular Casala collaborators, Jonas Kressel and Ivo Schelle - and in five new colours, Charcoal, White, Red, Green and Macchiato (a rather lush light coffee shade).
The palette may not be original – the 21st-century colours were chosen by Casala with the help of Kressel + Schelle - so gone is the flashy, wild orange, but the scratchproof, impact-resistant chair itself has been cast from the original mould, so it’s less a replica and more a genuine reissue, say Casala.
Officially the relaunch of the Casalino (and yes, there are adult versions too!) is to coincide with Casala’s 90th birthday. But interest in the baby Casalino has been building for some time… Vintage versions have been on the online shop, Bianca & Family, for the last year or so, and, Little Fashion Gallery’s Marie Soudre Richard, who sells the vintage numbers has been a fan for a number of years. “Paul, my son, has been using it [a vintage one] since the age of one. He loved the round design and that it wasn’t angular, and he also really likes the bright colours.” Read the rest of this article
Posted 2 September 2008 in Design + Decoration, Furniture
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