Back in the day – well, 1985 to be exact – I was working as Editorial Secretary on the Design Council’s now defunct Design Magazine and Red or Dead, founded by Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway, was fast becoming one of the hottest and most subversive British fashion brands around. Fast forward nearly 30 years to January 2013 and “Hemingway at Home” was one of the busiest and buzziest stands at the Home 2013 Show when I visited on the event’s opening day.
The Hemingways have been no slouches in the intervening years. As well as guiding Red or Dead to international success for well over a decade, their CV’s reveal an impressive range of activities including urban regeneration schemes, affordable social housing projects, a Silver medal-winning garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, Honorary Doctorates from Lancaster and also Stafford Universities, the creation of the new, highly successful, Vintage Festival … and so the list goes on. All this, plus an MBE apiece. Not bad going.
Today’s post, though, is all about their designs for the home. The Hemingway at Home stand, designed as a pop-up bungalow – and winner of Best Stand 2013 – brought together the entire range of interiors products and design collaborations, with the different rooms showcasing furniture, wallpaper and wall art, paint, floor and wall tiles and homewares.
The furniture collection designed for G Plan Vintage, and exclusive to John Lewis, was launched last autumn. Paying homage to the iconic furniture brand’s heritage of quality and craftsmanship, the new designs feature updated styling details for a fresh, more contemporary look. The ranges of sofas and chairs are named after the years of the original models that influenced the current designs: the Fifty-Five is pure nostalgia, with its wood inlaid arms; the buttoning of the Sixty-One adds extra detail and character; and the clean, simple lines of the Sixty-Seven make it ultra-versatile and easy to fit into any number of room schemes. You can find more information about sizes, fabrics and prices at G Plan Vintage for John Lewis.
The stand’s bedroom walls sported my favourite design from their Vintage wallpaper collection for Graham and Brown, the wonderfully stylish and glamorous Deco Diamonds, below left; below right is Grid, from the same range – very 1950’s Mad Men.
Their collaboration with Surface View has resulted in two collections; HemingwayDesign, with pop-art influenced bold colour and pattern (see right), and The Land of Lost Content, a unique collection of British popular cultural artefacts and artworks co-owned by Stella Mitchell and Wayne Hemingway. Prints and canvases, large scale wall murals, blinds and tiles are all available, with your choice of image scaled and printed to whatever size you wish on the product of your choice. Could this be the ultimate “feature wall”…?
The Vintage by Hemingway homewares collection includes a range of kitchenalia – storage containers, chopping board, trays, aprons and oven mitts – as well as bathroom accessories and haberdashary items, recalling the style of bygone days; all are available from John Lewis.
Their collections are an absolute must for lovers of all things retro and kitsch for the home, but the work of HemingwayDesign also has a much broader and more serious appeal.
At the heart of what they do is the philosophy that design can “improve things that matter in life”. Their work with social, charitable, affordable housing and urban regeneration projects reflects their ambition to make good design more affordable and more widely accessible, and in doing so they ensure that design’s transformative and life-enhancing effects reach well beyond our front doors. Read more at www.hemingwaydesign.co.uk.
Images: Surface View, John Lewis. HemingwayDesign
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