Almost Christmas

photos by Michael Graydon, styling by Nikole Herriott for Oh Joy

Christmas Wreath

Aesop Ginza

The new Aesop store in Ginza, Japan has been designed by architect Jo Nagasaka of Schemata Architecture Office. It's evidentially Aesop, using every day materials in surprising and stunning ways, with bold repetitious VM. Architect Jo used few materials, with red brick (a nod to the original brick facade) and wood the heroes. Simple.

How's about that copper sink - va va voom.

The IT KIT

Launched just in the time for Christmas is the IT KIT, a clever concept by 2 Melbourne girls Anna & Mirrie. The IT KITs are carefully edited and curated collection of goodies all boxed up beautifully. There are KITS for guys and girls, foodies and then there's the ultimate IT KIT full of bubbles, good reading material and a luxurious handsoap from Jacqueline Evans to name but a few.

The IK KIT girls are having a 4 day pop up starting today - the address is 23 Grattan St, Prahran so head on down to get a jump start on your Christmas shopping.

IT KIT Summer Collection for girls

IT KIT Summer Collection for guys 

IT KIT Foodie Kit

Who wouldn't want to receive this Ultimate IT KIT?!

In the workshop..

Making progress on this years Christmas Trees. The first orders go out tomorrow to Ballyhoo in Geelong!

Christmas Trees

The orders for Christmas Trees have started to come through, so yesterday production started in the workshop. Here's a before shot for you.

A Shop Called Moth - November Window

Here's the November Window, a chandelier made from a gorgeous and mismatched selection of champagne flutes - all to celebrate the start of the drinking season!

Swing time

One of the most exciting things about designing our new house is also one of the most basic - a swing for the front tree for Alexander.

Good advice

I tend to do a lot of hand-drawn floor plans, perspectives and furniture designs, it works for me, my makers and my clients. But more and more I think that I need to smarten up my act and get digital, do proper 3D renders etc. Then I read this great blog entry from Abigail Ahern (she talks a lot about imperfectly perfect interiors) and it made me feel better that STYLE just IS, it's not overly structured or as Abigail says "style comes from the heart and not a text book".

"When it comes to placing furniture  you can draw a floor plan, sketch the room on paper, cut out of paper scaled pieces of furniture and so on. To hell with all of that I say I simply cannot be bothered. Put me in a room,  leave me for a while and I will happily potter away until I’ve got the perfect sense of balance and harmony going on. Its way more fun in my mind than mapping it all out making sure there is x amount of space for traffic lanes, the coffee table is so many centimetres from the sofa, the chairs are so many centimetres from the sofa – ugg cannot stand it. Yes it’s important to have a basic knowledge but really it’s such an old fashioned way of decorating and too formulaic. Follow you heart, try not to shove any sofa’s or chairs against a wall, forget traffic lanes – in my house you can’t even walk in a straight line from one point to another you have to weave (formally trained interior designers will be passing out by now)" 

For the love of legs

After a teeny tiny delay in production, the my first sofa is now complete. You may remember a while back I shared my dining table design (check it out again here) well this sofa was made for the same client, so I adopted the same leg on both the table and sofa as a subtle link between the two who share a large open living/dining area.

Market Lane Coffee Cart

For this merchandising trolley for the new Market Lane in Therry St, I took a vintage Belgian hospital trolley, removed the glass and had some custom timber tops made.
Interior & product design: Claire Larritt-Evans
Photography: Armelle Habib

Ana Krås

Noodle side table by Serbian designer Ana Krås.

Table Tonic loving

Big thanks to Louise from Table Tonic for the blog-loving today - and hello and welcome to my new visitors to my blog. I'm a huge fan of Louise's online homewares store Table Tonic where she sells magic pieces like this amazing JuJu Hat below. This is something I have lusted for a loooong time, with our settlement just a week away I might just take the plunge. Anyway the other thing I love about Table Tonic is her blog, it's a daily dose of interiors plus some super healthy recipes - all written in a such a lovely and friendly tone that you just want to be her best friend - ha! Welcome new readers and thanks Lousie! x

JuJu Hat - get it here from Table Tonic.

Delivery day

It's like Christmas here at Larritt-Evans HQ! I've been packaging everything up and some wonderful clients will receive bundles of goodies tomorrow ready to install.

Sofa Legs

Sofa legs are ready to go to the upholsterer tomorrow. Local manufacturing rocks my world.

More behind the scenes with Moth

Here's a peek into the evolution of this months Moth window, it's one of my favourite jobs - and I look forward to creating something new for Jocey. This month I got Stef involved and she did a fantastic job constructing the Moth dress.

 A tule skirt was required for a full 50's/Mad Men style.

 Next was the sweetheart neckline.

 With the dress complete - we had to carefully transport her to Albert Park.

We pulled together a mis-matching set of jugs and vases, I wanted a real 'Nanna' feel to the collection. Then we filled them full of really simple and colour flowers.

The final result.

Prepping for the Moth window

Here's some behind the scenes action of my fab new intern Stef creating the dress for this month's window for A Shop Called Moth - "stand out in the crowd".

Material selections

Materials board for a restaurant fit out in the city.

The Flower Appreciation Society

Spring is here, daylight savings has started - so it's time to start using more and more flowers. I have just come across The Flower Appreciation Society, 2 London girls Ellie & Anna who banded together over their hopeless love of flowers. I am digging their garden type varieties and the clash of colour, shape and variety - all in a perfect, non-perfect way.

Lighting cord

Bit my bit I am extending my collection of electrical cords for use in designing lights for clients. This is my newest find, "ship rope" braided cord. Contact me if you want some!

Final touches

I just installed these beauties at the studio, they're pot-less plants from Glasshaus. We've assigned Sarah as our 'plant manager' so she'll just need to dip them in a bucket of water once a week. Clever work Glasshaus.

Spring window A Shop Called Moth

Here's my spring window for A Shop Called Moth. I went for all white this year, very different to last Spring's colourful display.

La Madre shoot

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting the lovely Anna from La Madre Bakery and styled her new range of breads. (Have you tried their bread - it's bread as it should be!). I shot with photographer Cricket - it was a dream team, we had a great day and left with a great bank of images. Here's a look at one of my faves.

Honorary Swearer

At the beginning of this year I started sharing a studio with Scott and his crew at Swear Words in their new space in Richmond. It's been such a wonderful change to my working life. I get on with my business and they theirs, however more and more we are working across the same projects. A lot of the time Swear Words will put in me in touch with their clients and now wonderfully I can share the love back sending work their way. Our clients love that the interior design and branding are being developed side by side, by people who share a vision and a common goal.

So I was honoured when this week they nominated me as an Honorary Swearer in this months Cursive Newsletter. Read the full newsletter here:

Here's Scotts' artwork for this months Cursive newsletter, not only it is good looking, but clever too (yes I'm biased but it's true). I didn't see it the first time - but notice the Roman Numerals indicating issue 12? Genius love!

Micro Roast China

A few months ago I received an email from Chao Huang, a young Chinese coffee enthusiast asking me to design his new specialist roastery in China. In what turned out to be the most modern working arrangement, we did the whole project over email, me sending floorplans, furniture designs and specs over email and regular photos being sent back to me to approve/comment on - all without one conversation in real time (not one phone call, and there's no Skype, You Send It, Twitter, Facebook and all other means of communication I so heavily rely on).

In fact the first time I spoke to Chao was when I landed in his hometown of Fuzhou and he collected me from the airport with his wife Jenny and their adorable son. In fact we did attempt for me to design the space from Melbourne, but I just couldn't do it without being there. The space was so unique, it was the orginal YMCA building built in 1952. So I flew to China for 2 days to conduct a site visit and lock in floor plans, in that timewe did that and more, I visited tile factories, light manufacturers and ATE. The amazing hospitality of Chao and his wife Jenny meant that we dined for hours every day, taking at least a 2 hour break each meal to try the local cuisine.

There were so mant firsts, it is the first specialty roaster in all of China, the first time I had worked overseas, my first visit to China and the first time I had worked without an architect. I am so pleased to say that it all went so smoothly, Chao and Jenny trusted me and gave me free reign to create something truly unique for the Chinese market. It was a real investment for this young couple to invest in a Western designer and I am so grateful that they did.

It seems the youth of Fuzhou have fully embraced the concept and already are flocking in large numbers to congregate and drink quality coffee. I don' t have any of my own photos to share with you as I've not been there since my visit before construction begun (crazy insane) so here are a few that Chao has sent through to me.

BTW Here is the site before - untouched for decades. I stripped back the render to reveal the beautiful old bricks and opened up the whole space, including removing the second story to create a floating cupping lab. God bless the local engineers who NEVER questioned my vision - they just made it happen.

For your desktop

Brass pencil holder

Available online from Roost

Working with Armelle...

It's always a pleasure working with the lovely and talented photographer Armelle Habib. We've shot many projects together including Jacqueline Evans, Market Lane. Here's one of my favs from our early days shooting together.

Styling: Claire Larritt-Evans

Photography: Armelle Habib

Iosselliani

Massive crush on these rings by Iosselliani. Available at the Barney CoOp.

Stylist Susanna Vento

Impeccable styling by Finnish stylist Susanna Vento.

http://www.susannavento.fi/

Thrilled

I took a brief yesterday to work on a real Melbourne landmark hospo spot. I'm just a little bit honoured & thrilled. Stage 1 is restoring 80 of these beauties.

Quince window

Detail from my recent window for Quince.

Quince

hand printed textiles
287 wattletree road
malvern east
vic 3145
03 9509 5508

Market Lane at Queen Vic

Interior Design and Styling: Claire Larritt-Evans

Photography: Armelle Habib

Market Lane at Queen Vic

Styling: Claire Larritt-Evans

Photography: Armelle Habib

Market Lane Coffee

109-111 Therry St

Melbourne.

Beat Vessels by Tom Dixon

Spun brass 'Beat Vessels' by Tom Dixon, impeccably styled and on my wish list for a new project.

Behind the scenes at La Madre

Here's a behind the scenes look at today's shoot for La Madre Bakery. I had a lovely day shooting with Anna and photographer Cricket - we got some dangerously delicious shots.