The Beat That My Heart Skipped - A blog dedicated to daily design inspirations. By Rohini Wahi.

Letti and Co.

Rohini — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:51:18 +0000

I need one of these in my life right now! This beautiful and unusual bed brand Letti and Co. was launched earlier this year by Italian company Gervasoni and creative genius Paola Navone.

I love how the collection mixes traditional Italian styling with modern comfort. Lots of layered upholstery detail and mix and match patterns in luscious vivid colour palettes give the whole collection a modern fairytale feel – especially the simple uncovered striped mattress version which reminds me of the princess and the pea!

Shop Bamarang

Rohini — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:38:44 +0000

Over the years I’ve gained a pretty good handle on the content of online homeware stores in the UK and while they are filled with beautiful product by great British designers – I’ve pretty much seen it all before. But lately there has been a flood of exciting new online home shopping sites with a flash sale format – where products are sold for a limited time period at discounted rates [pretty thrilling really!]. All of these sites seem to have dynamic buying teams who have been introducing me to great independent brands wanting to get involved in the who I never knew existed!

One of these sites that I’m pretty sure I am about to be seriously addicted to is Bamarang. A dedicated team of design scouts, Bamarang is based in London’s creative core of Shoreditch and scour the UK to curate super inspiring items from fashion accessories to homeware – and my favourite because it’s such a different offering to other sites of the kind – vouchers for food experiences. The scouts work closely with the brands to get a discount of up to 70%. Each item is only online for a week at a time and exclusive to members of the site [no fee just a sign up].

My current favourites are super cool textiles from British brand Custhom , simple and rustic jewellery from RipeGoods, and gold stained ceramics from the Usuals all at reduced retail prices. Addictive much?

Since there’s nothing better than a Friday afternoon shop – Bamarang have kindly given all my readers £10 off their first purchases so click here to get shopping!

Want Row of Letters

Rohini — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:31:09 +0000

Hand stamped Inky Blue and Coral cushions from Row of Letters

Urban Cottage Industries

Rohini — Fri, 04 May 2012 12:48:50 +0000

On the hunt for the hard to come by but very popular filament light-bulbs for our home – I stumbled across a gem of a site – UK based Historic Lighting a part of an industrious family run company Urban Cottage Industries.

The simple site sells all the components you might need for your industrial lighting needs from Edison light-bulbs, light-bulb holders, a multiple outlet ceiling rose [so all of the lighting in your room can filter neatly out of one outlet] and beautiful in-house lighting designs. The right hand side of the site lets you click through to other multiple related businesses. Click through to Fabric Cable.co.uk and you will find a multitude of candy coloured cables for your lights. Hollywood Mirrors.co.uk take you through to an amazing source for theatrical mirrors and Moleskine Press a site for embossing bespoke sentiments onto Moleskins…

I was so excited and intrigued by my finds and the ingenuity of the company I had to find out more.

Launched in 2009 Urban Cottage Industries are they are the only supplier of entire vintage industrial systems and components in the UK. Selling original 1930s-1950s factory lighting (salvaged from the redundant factories and workshops of industrial Yorkshire), fixings and accessories (still made by the original manufacturers using the same techniques in the same factories since Victorian times) clients have included: Levis, Reiss, Harvey Nichols, Hermès, Jamie Oliver, Caravan, White Stuff and Soho House. I spoke to Stanley Wilson its founder…

What is Urban Cottage Industries and when was it founded?
We manufacture and supply vintage industrial lighting – durable, heavy duty products that stand the test of time. We started using the name ‘Urban Cottage Industries’ in 2008 though the roots go back much further. We work on huge projects (eg. Hollywood movies) and tiny orders (eg. a single light-bulb to illuminate your kitchen table) with equal care and passion.

How did the business arise?
I worked in concert lighting ever since leaving school. Vintage industrial lighting didn’t exist back then (I’m 36 this year) but the redundant textile mills of Yorkshire (where I’m from) were full of it. I had lighting skills and passion for rooting out the old stuff. What began as a hobby spilled over into my professional life.

Cleverly you are tapping into industrial style lighting and all the hard to access components that are so popular right now. Is this intentional? I love this sort of lighting and it is very hard to get in the UK!

It’s all been a (very gratefully received) stroke of luck – plenty of my other interests, passions and pursuits (eg. Marx’s Theory of The Decline in the Rate of Profit) have shown no signs of becoming fashionable. By creating a modular range of simple, quality products we make it possible and affordable to create lighting exactly how our customers want it. Even well known lighting brands tend to put profits first and flexibility last – sweatshop manufacturing in less developed countries, inflexible designs, cheap materials – products that are likely to break or date too quickly.

Where do you source all of your parts?
What we can source we do, what we can’t we have to manufacture ourselves. Most of what we supply is made in the UK or Europe. We avoid manufacturing locations where we would not be prepared for our own children to work – a simple rule we believe all consumers should insist on.

Why do you have different sites for each part of the collection and not one for all?
It’s just the way it unfolded, we made it up as we went along. We have no history in business. With hindsight it would probably have been more successful if we’d adopted a more conventional approach.

You seem to work on a lot of different things on your blog. What are you working on right now?
A Filament Light-bulb based rock and roll lighting stage set. We’re very excited about it.

Please tell me anything else you think I might find interesting about Urban Cottage industries!
Last year we rescued the UK’s largest collection of linotype machines from the scrap yard. Later this year we’ll be launching a high quality, vintage, British made alternative to the personalised greeting cards you see advertised on TV.

Ikeas PS2012

Rohini — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:20:59 +0000

Now I’m a “grown up” with my own home, I have been trying desperately to steer myself away from the easy option of furnishing our home in Ikea pieces. Although I love the brand, I want our home to slowly develop it’s own character and personality which Ikea furniture with it’s distinctive look doesn’t always allow.

However, putting a spanner in my quest to move on – is Ikea’s super exciting new PS2012 collection launching in store this May with 60 new pieces inspired by vintage Ikea designs. With PS2012 Ikea have updated retro forms with innovative functions functions, and sustainable materials like bamboo, recycled PET plastic, wood plastic composite and linen.

The piece that first grabbed my attention was the retro three seat sofa above. If I had a NYC loft style home then this would be the first piece in it – i love it’s rounded edges and the contrast between the hard metal and super squishy piped seat pads. It looks so comfortable for an afternoon snooze!

Another key piece in the collection is a stripped wood milkmaid style chest of drawers. These wouldn’t usually be my thing but its over-sized wood grain surface gives the piece a contemporary folksy edge which is really interesting. I also love the collection’s new angular wall lights [available in white black and red] which borrows from vintage Anglepoise silhouettes. These lights actually have an LED source of light which allows them their unusual flat shape.

As always the brand has released a plethora of cute side tables and chairs in covetable colours but my star piece has to be Ikea’s series of geometric pendant lights. Actually I am unsure as to how this product taps into Ikea’s past as it is so very of the moment in terms of the trend for geometric design – and it’s for that reason that I love it. At a very reasonable £93 these black, yellow and aqua lights are probably the cheapest of this style on the market and are just so un-Ikea like that they might just make the cut for my new grown up home!