Excellent Childen's Period Footwear

Katy found me this link to Victor & Victorine, the shoes are perfect for period work and pretty cute for contemporary too, N starts school after the summer so there's a search on to find something which conforms in an acceptable way!
Apologies for the poor quality of the picture, we don't have an actual pair to photograph.

Childrens Knitted Gloves

It's hard to believe it's been ten years since we spent all those months travelling around Europe sourcing and sampling things for Shelf. We did sell vintage items in the beginning and these kids gloves, found in a Barcelona flea market, were some of the items we brought back but were never able to part with. We talked about box frames and showcases but somehow they stayed in a cardboard box in the basement, just as they presumably always had.

sun

at last!

valentines day

Miss Hart has a Valentines day birthday, so we baked chocolate cake & heart shaped biscuits.
yum

fish finger, potato, pea - tree

I often make N's food into pictures or faces.
Yesterday we ate trees.
The enamel plate says A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for car, D is for dog, and E=MC2 in the middle!
We sold these & other witty ceramic plates by a long forgotten designer from San Francisco . . ?

UPDATE - they were called A-1 Product Co.
Lovely people we met at the SF Gift Fair, whatever happened to them?

water bottle

This water bottle has one of our most favourite Rob Ryan Illustrations on it ever.
Amazingly the colours are exactly as the original tile design we stocked a good few years ago.

I cant think of a better gift to encourage the small people in our lives to drink more water!
You can buy one here

Play House

At what point in the boys life would this cease to be used!?
Play House, Jakarta

Laurie the Lion

Laurie the Lion is new in SHELF.

Ethically produced in Sri Lanka by Barefoot Design, and designed in the '60's,
Laurie the Lion is hand made from hand woven & dyed cotton, stuffed with Kapok and shipped slowly by sea to Cornwall.
(this is proving to be a problem getting more stock in time for Christmas!) 

Barefoot was founded in 1962 in Sri Lanka by colourist, artist, designer and entrepreneur Barbara Sansoni.

They work mainly with women.

Nothing is mass-produced.  

No child labour is used.  

All employees are given a decent wage and benefits.  

There are no factories and no production lines. 

Each worker is responsible for the quality of the final product.  

Barefoot teach the skills and strive for quality from the weavers and sewers.

If you are a small person, you can sit on his back!

important people

Making words today, N decided to write names, all these people are VERY important to her.

Family: J, K, N and Tom (works at nursery!)

Other important people: Elaine (Chalmers) of A Little of What you Fancy  (gave her a biscuit)

Olit Tolit and Shoody, ever present, imaginary, v.v. special.

Ernesto Neto at Hayward Gallery

N & I went here this week, its brilliant for kids if its raining, which it is a lot this week.

I personally thought the exhibit was ugly, just not to my taste, but I heard plenty of adults saying how much they loved it.

N had to be dragged out after several hours, and she would have happily stayed all day.
Wish I'd had a book in my bag, but it was stuffed with rainwear & sandwiches.

Part of the show is a donut shaped swimming pool on the roof, but being only 92cm high, madam was 18cm too short.

GO!