The February Issue

Our February issue is out. Let our editor Hatta Byng talk you through the highlights...

I'm not sure I've ever stuck to a New Year's resolution, I'm ashamed to admit it, but this year, in support of the designers who have shared their resolutions for 2017 in this issue, I feel I must. And just maybe the fact that it is in print will be an incentive to ensure I carry it through. There is definitely no point in me trying to give up milk chocolate as interior designer Peter Mikic suggests; as much as I'd like to attempt it, I won't. I've just popped several bite-size Cadbury Wispas into my mouth as I type this.

So, inspired by Elizabeth Metcalfe's 'Design ideas' featuring smart, work-conducive studies and desk areas, my resolution is to file paperwork as I go and make our studio (as we grandly call it) at the end of our garden a place I really want to be. When we built it three years ago, we set off with such good intentions: buying a rug in Morocco, creating a little seating nook between the shelving and finding some elegant vintage chairs for our desks. But it has never quite been pulled together and, set away from the house, it all too easily becomes a dumping ground. My husband turns a blind eye, but I'm pained by the things I haven't got right, the piles of papers and miscellaneous junk that needs to be sorted and bookshelves that have never been properly arranged. So I resolve to sort it and this also involves getting my husband to do his filing (hopefully the fact that this is now in print will encourage him, too).

Designer Mary Graham of Salvesen Graham is giving up grey; Rita Konig is taking up blue; while Penny Morrison's goal is to use more wallpaper in her projects. If I was decorating another house, this might be my resolution, too. I haven't used any wallpaper in our current house, but I love other people's wallpapered rooms; your spirit is lifted immediately as you enter. For Swatch, Ruth Sleightholme has selected the prettiest of wallpapers; they are all wide in width (and mostly sold by the metre) for a more seamless and often dramatic effect.

If you are picking up this issue a couple of months after publication, all this talk of New Year will seem rather odd for a February issue, but those reading it hot off the press will have it right at the beginning of January. So, to herald the new year, our back page is the first in a new series entitled 'Self portrait', asking inspirational tastemakers to paint a picture of their life and work, and what stirs their imagination. I can think of nobody better to start this off than Christine Van Der Hurd, a truly talented textile designer who has an eye for pattern, colour and texture unlike anyone else I know.

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