Some more lovely lines!

After browsing the net for Camille yesterday, I also came across another great find - Johanna Basford. She is an illustrator from Scotland; specialising in beautiful doodly linework - you can find her site here. 

Here are some of my favourites that I picked out from her website - love it!! :)

Ooooooh - would love to get my hands on some of these ceramics - beautiful!!...

She's even customised a Smart car - WOW! :O

Isn't it great when you make new discoveries... :)

Earth & Fire

Hope you all had a fabulous weekend; wasn't it gorgeous?  - the sun was shining and the temperature soaring, so we made the most of it and headed out and about. 

On Sunday we went to the National Ceramics fair - Earth & Fire, at Rufford Park - it was FAB! So many beautiful and original pieces to look at...here were some of my favourites:

- a beautiful stall with lots of blue - pure eye candy! :) See her site here

- these were so delicate and pretty; she had some gorgeous little brooches on sale too. To see more click here.

- I seem to have developed a new love for jugs and teapots at the moment; I fell in love with these as soon as I saw them - lots of gorgeous lace detail and pattern; so pretty! 

To see more click here.

- thought these were stunning; so unusual and fragile. See more about Eryl here.

- and last, but not least, these quirky teapots and jugs really caught my eye - wish I could have taken one home! :) There were some lovely textiles available too. See more here.

Oooh, what a lovely find!

On Saturday, as well as the fete, there was an Antiques Fair being held at the university, and as we were there we decided to have a little look around after packing up the stall....I'm so glad we did; look what I found:

- it was such a beautiful pattern that I fell in love with it straight away; it really caught my eye! Anyway, we decided it was far too lovely to leave behind, and purchased it, even managing to knock something off the price (well, you have to be a little bit cheeky sometimes, don't you! ;D )

When we got home I was so thrilled with our find, and proudly started unpacking it - we hadn't really paid much attention to the make or designer at the fair, but then I took another look and decided to google it to find out a bit more. Turns out it was designed by a very important figure in the ceramics world - Jessie Tait - and that her pieces were now highly sought after! Sadly, I read a bit more and found that she had passed away earlier this year at the age of 81. A fellow 'Midlander', she grew up and lived in Trentham, Stoke-on-Trent, designing for most of her life - even after her retirement apparently! She has some fantastic designs - I recognised some of them, though never knew the designer's name. Whilst searching her name I even found our set in an online article taken from this month's 'Vintage Life' magazine! What a coincidence! 

It really was a great little find...now all that's left to do is to find this pretty set somewhere safe to take pride of place in my home! :)