WORLD TOUR: Famille Summerbelle

LAST YEAR JULIE MARABELLE, creative director of children’s decor design company Famille Summerbelle did what we all talk about. She, her husband Simon, and their two year old daughter Ophelia, took off. A world tour followed - intended as an inspiring few months of non-work life - prior to settling down to develop their newly launched company, and relocating to Paris from London.

Here, she shares her highlights of the trip, and her family-friendly pointers for a smooth life on the road…

LittleBig: What was the country that surprised you most with its child friendliness?

Japan [pictured above left] was a really pleasant surprise. We didn’t know quite what to expect, but we were astonished by just how friendly people were. Men and women would go out of their way to engage with Ophelia. On one train journey to Kyoto a little old lady made an origami swan which she gave to Ophelia - it was just wonderful. Read the rest of this article

Posted 7 February 2009 in Travel

TOP SHOP: Tas-ka

WARNING. YOU MAY FIND it hard to resist Tas-ka’s textile toys and soft furnishings. Certainly, co-directors Jantien Baas and Hester Worst of the textile house based in The Hague, the Netherlands, have their own designs at home: Hester the hand-made white ‘birdlight’ (pictured bottom in the gallery) made of clusters of handmade paper cranes, and Jantien their charismatic fabric monster on her couch. And she doesn’t even have kids. 

All that is to come. For now, the duo who formed Tas-ka whilst at design college at the Royal College of Art in the Hague and morphed the project into a proper business post their studies - becoming full-time in October of last year - have a growing line of textile products on their minds.   Read the rest of this article

Posted 31 January 2009 in Shop Watch

‘S’ is for STYLE FILE: Lucy Ryder Richardson

EX-JOURNALIST LUCY RYDER RICHARDSON (pictured left, aged 6) masterminded the Kids.Modern design show in Dulwich, South London, with business partner Petra Curtis. The yearly show features the best in designer/makers selling modern toys, clothes and home goodies for kids, and also features kids’ activities such as Ella Doran’s Make a Tray workshop. The latest Kids.Modern show is on 15th February (click here for details). Lucy lives with her architect husband and two children, Molly and Bert, in a hip 1970s suburban house in Dulwich, stocked with mid-century designs she also sells. 

LB: What’s the one (design) thing you couldn’t live without?

LRR: Sadly my iPod - as it has my music, recordings of my children talking when they were tiny, my meditation CDs plus a few backing tracks I like to sing along to all loaded on there.

LB: As a kid, was there an outfit you loved so much you slept in it? 

LRR: My Mum was too OCD to let me sleep in my favourite outfits. I did love a purple beret and my clogs though and would have slept in the royal blue flares with black cherries from Clothkits that my Mum never finished making if they weren’t still in her bottom drawer with the pins in.

LB: What are your children’s favourite things that you also think are quite cool?

LRR: Too many to mention. I love a circus trapeze artist style bright green net frou frou skirt my 7-year-old daughter Molly got from America with gold sequins on, and I wish I could squeeze into the red and white polka dot flamenco shoes she likes to wear it with. She also has a few peaked knitted caps I wear when she’s not looking. And I have been known to dab on some of her bright turquoise eyeshadow before going out. My 3-year-old son Bert has a skateboard I love and I am a bit keen on his new grey and blue diamond patterned fleece lined zip up jacket.

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Posted 6 January 2009 in Opinion

OLDIE BUT GOODIE: The Olde Bell Inn

By Jenny Dalton

IT WAS AN experiment to see if it is possible to harness the ‘holiday’ spirit in just two days, and only half an hour away from home.
Even before my son arrived, three and a bit years ago, I’d never done anything so unusual. Weekends away - although not common - were to Barcelona or Paris, or in the UK, to Yorkshire or Cornwall - not just a 35 minute jaunt round the M25/M40.
But demoralised by the approach of a cold, dark winter, and seduced by the promise of Ilse Crawford’s first UK designed hostelry - and also, I have to say, bolstered by the increasingly fashionable idea of holidaying close to home - it was hard to turn down the opportunity to capture a little bit of Autumn romance at the recently made-over coaching inn..

It should be said, the Olde Bell Inn - in Hurley, a lesser known Berkshire village close to the rather more famous Henley - and a couple of miles walk up river (The Thames) from Marlow, is a work in progress. The Inn itself - with parts dating from the 1100s - consists of seven bedrooms featuring supersize beds, Bestlite lamps and roll-top baths, a cosy pub bar at the front complete with friendly village locals, and a restaurant at the back. The futher rooms and barns in a large complex across the road from the Inn are undergoing the Studio Ilse treatment right now - and once complete one imagines would be the perfect party / wedding venue. Read the rest of this article

Posted 19 December 2008 in Travel

TOP SHOP: kids love design

WHILST THE FRENCH have come to contemporary design later than their Italian cousins, they have fully embraced the world of contemporary design for kids in an incredibly short time. First Milk magazine, then Little Fashion Gallery, and now ‘kids love design‘ - currently the ultimate design e-boutique for kids.

Begun by Séverine Herbeth Limon - French but now based in Switzerland, and mother to Mathis 4, and Amelie, 1 - who began researching the idea of modern children’s design whilst resident in Luxembourg, London and Brussels, the store was a culmination of realising, “all these cities have great modern furniture shops, but after the birth of my children I became so frustrated that the only room in the house I wasn’t happy with was also perhaps the most important for a new parent - the baby’s room. So I decided to do something about it.”  

She has spent the last three years scouring Europe for “fresh, modern, inspiring, environmentally-friendly” design for little people that surpasses the obvious brands. In their stead are niche European names from 12 countries - names like Domestic, Ineke Hans and Fellin who promote true innovations for children and babies, and create designs that would not only look precisely at ease in the most modern of homes, but are probably a great deal more cutting edge than much of your own furniture. Read the rest of this article

Posted 10 December 2008 in Shop Watch