Mint The Shop

Itswhatiminto is a great new site on the blog scene from design agency Wisdom & Youth. Sara Trickett, one of the editors of the newbie blog, popped past for a cuppa and a catch up while the ever talented Tyrone Bradley took some pics of my home. Check out itswhatiminto for the latest trends on fashion, interiors, culture, arts and anything and everything else design oriented. Thanks Sara & Tyrone – my home has never looked so good!

P.S. Check out their FB page for all the pics

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J&G Meakin Jug by Eve Midwinter

This lovely jug from J&G Meaking was designed by Eve Midwinter in 1973. From the brief bit of information I could find on Eve, it seems that she married into the famous pottery family, Midwinter, and produced a series of now-famous designs for the company, but obviously also worked for other pottery houses at different points too. This jug doesn’t actually have a maker’s mark on the base, but when I looked at the quality of the design I knew it had a serious name behind it. Eve Midwinter is cited along other female design greats like Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper, so I’m assuming she was fairly successful in her time. The jug has a really nice shape to it, but obviously it’s the Poppy pattern that’s the real star here. I love the way the stylised design of the poppy flowers sits alongside the more realist drawing of the chyrsanthemums. The jug has some minor wear around the base, but other than that is in near perfect nick, impressive considering it’s nearly 40 years old!

Dimensions: 16cm tall x 10cm in diameter

Price: R120

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Small desk clock

I don’t really know much about this little desk clock. It has the word ‘foreign’ printed on the face, which apparently was often the case when the movements for English clocks were made abroad, most often in Germany. The style of the face looks kind of ’60s, as does the slant of the base, but I can’t quite make out the maker’s mark on the back of the clock, so haven’t been able to do much research into its history. I’m assuming it was intended as a promotional desk clock because it has the name of a firm just above the number six – the name and telephone number go round in a half-circle as the seconds tick by. It’s a wind-up clock, so you have to be quite systematic and wind it up once a day. I’ve tried it out a few days running and it appears to keep perfect time. A lovely, simple design that will add a bit of a retro twist to your home or office.

Dimensions: 6cm in diameter x 6cm at its tallest

Price: R130

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Pair of Consol glass jars

Consol is a South African glass manufacturing company that opened its doors in 1946 and is still going strong today, having become a household name in our country. I bought this pair of preserve jars for the their glass lids, which unusually have the name Consol embossed onto them. Today these lids are made from metal, and generally the older glass lids are patterned with small dots or ridges – these are the first branded lids that I’ve come across. The one bottle has measurements on the side, but the other bottle is plain, although they seem to be identical in every other way. The metal part of the lids is a bit worse for wear, but the thread is still fine, so they’re perfectly functional. A lovely pair of jars, and a great piece of South Afican history.

Dimensions: 18cm tall x 9cm in diameter

Price: R75 each

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Pair of Phoenix pyrex dishes

I know I may have made this claim before, but these are two of my very favourite pyrex dishes of all time! I love their vivid colours, the ribbed glass, and the unusual shape of the handles. I’ve come  across a few pyrex dishes with these handles and colours before, but they’re generally too badly damaged to buy – the paintwork on these dishes is much more susceptible to scratching than the traditional pyrex pastel colours, and the fact that the handles protrude the way they do means that they’re more likely to have been chipped over the years. Sadly the yellow dish does have a chip in the rim (see pics under ‘more’), but I couldn’t bear to separate it from its friend, so I bought them both, and despite the chip it’s still in reasonably good nick and is a lovely item to look at (and of course it’s still perfectly functional).

Dimensions: Yellow dish – 22cm long x 16cm wide x 13cm high (with lid on); Blue dish 19cm in diameter x 11cm high (with lid on)

Price: Yellow dish – R130; Blue dish – R150

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