Tuesday 24 June 2014

Anthropologie, Guildford - display

Painted old French books displaying door knobs
Mirror discs glued to short sticks of wood.
Pretty hair slides in a glass jar with floral hair band
Fabric wrapped boards to display necklaces.
A close up of those door knobs on books.
Every Anthropologie shop has different displays. I've written about the London Anthropologies - in the King's Road and Regent Street before but this is the first time I've visited their Guildford shop. Penny Seume, whose cushions and lampshades are in Handmade Happiness has an area designed around her work in their new Bath store including a papier mache mantlepiece and a big arm chair covered in her velvet fabric.

It's inspiring to see such unusual displays and it must be great fun to be part of the team that thinks up what zany, off-the-wall idea to create next.  It's all about re-cycling. Using old, sometimes disposable objects in an original way. The chandeliers made of plastic drinking cups and plastic spoons come to mind and the used fruit tea bags hanging like a curtain in their Regent Street window. Giant painted murals made like waves with cut/torn cardboard boxes. Those looked wonderful and make me want to do something equally unusual in Handmade Happiness.

 It would be ideal if you could make art out of objects that would otherwise go to landfill. But perhaps rotting food and babies nappies would be beyond the imagination of even the talented Anthopologie team. Cutting and painting or re-covering plastic milk containers and tin cans would be relatively easy. In fact,  round mirrors could be glued to tin can ends to make a feature much like the wood and mirror art seen above. And the jewellery boards pictured have reminded me that a remnant of fabric could be wrapped round a cheap pin board to make a  picture and then there's  the bedheads I want to make with fabric covered foam ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Anthropologie is such a great shop isn't it! I get email updates of their stock and love their website too. Hoping to go there next week.
See you later in the week with stock including MINI recycled paper origami star garlands!!
Sue