Joris Laarman

I haven't really blogged about it but until December last year I had a long and seemingly unending heating saga. On the day of my house-warming in my new place, 4 days before Christmas 2003, I was thrilled when it began to snow and my new surroundings became white and beautiful for my guests. I was less pleased when I realised the boiler had stopped and we were all getting very cold.

It never worked again.

I had spent more buying the house than I planned (local property had doubled in a year, MrP got his for half what I paid) so I absolutely did not have an extra £2000 for a new boiler. I'm very eco conscious so I began looking into various options... underfloor heating, rooftop wind turbine, solar panels etc. but everything was either unsuitable for my building, unavailable (the silent SWIFT turbine) or just too damned expensive.

In the end I opted for a pellet stove which began a new saga (international cancellations, price rises on the flue due to world steel price blah blah blah). I'm missing out lots of the horror but suffice to say I had NO HEATING or hot water for two and a half winters and this resulted in burst pipes ruining floors, fabrics etc. It was very disheartening and depressing though I did finally get a stove installed in mid December, though I can't afford to run it. It heats the house (kind of) but hot water is still a distant dream.

But what has this to do with art or design you ask?
Well, in my quest for the perfect heating I was understandably swayed when I saw Joris Laarman's radiator in Elle Decoration. Love at first site.



I put my name on the waiting list immediately, you know, so that if I somehow come into some money I won't have to wait forever to get one!

But the reason I thought of all this just now was because I just saw on Abigail Percy's blog that he has been designing some gorgeous jewellery too! And I'm not picturing it here, that way you'll simply HAVE to visit her blog to see it (in the January archive) then you can see her jewellery at the same time! You know me, like to promote UK designers to you all ;0)