London Town

Recent trips to London have been very arduous to say the least.  We find ourselves leaving Tetbury at 7am for an 11am appointment.  After Slough the volume of traffic on the M4 slows the journey down – then there is worse to come in central London – just bumper to bumper.  The other drawback is the £38 parking fee, £10 congestion charge – makes it an expensive trip.  Friends had suggested it might be more cost effective & much quicker by train.  Having decided to let “the train take the strain” I checked out the website of Raileasy and found to my amazement a return ticket travelling from Kemble to Paddington for £40 – an offer I took up!  Kemble is only ten minutes from Tetbury & parking is easy.  Kemble has a great independently run station café serving bacon/sausage baps and really good coffee – perfect while waiting for the train which was departs at 09.19.  We arrived in Paddington at 10.37 – much quicker than driving.

The purpose of this trip was a mix of business and pleasure.  From Paddington we travelled by tube over to Holborn – pretty packed with visitors going to the Olympic Games at Stratford.  We left the tube and walked over to Lambs Conduit Street, Bloomsbury to our first appointment at the “Oliver Spencer” showroom.  We have admired this label for a long time – his signature is ‘seen but not heard’ which sits perfectly alongside our ever growing menswear brands. 

Thornback & Peel Rugby Street

French's Dairy

Interior of Ben Pentreath

Interior of Ben Pentreath 

The French House

Lambs Conduit Street

Lambs Conduit Street

After placing the order for spring/summer 2013 we decided to explore the area.  The atmosphere is slightly bohemian – no boring lack lustre chain stores, but interesting diverse shops run by like-minded people.  There’s a great choice of café/restaurants with pavement seating – perfect for people watching.  Just of Lambs Conduit Street is Rugby Street which has a good selecting of interesting shops French’s Dairy now a costume jewellery shop run by Maggie Owen, from who we have bought wholesale when we sold jewellery.  Her jewellery brands always had a point of difference.  Two doors down from Maggie is Ben Pentreath a small shop crammed full of carefully chosen products and a variety of antiques.  We bought a set of sturdy robust ‘Perigord’ wine glasses as we are forever breaking glassware.  Ben has an excellent blog that is well worth following.

The Courtyard Royal Academy

It was time to head over to central London for an appointment with ‘Nicole Farhi’.  We have rested this label for two seasons.  The spring/summer collection is strong and back on track, aware that our customers would like to see it back in store; we placed an order for 2013.  After Farhi we had engineered some free time by booking a later train home and went to Royal Academy Summer Exhibition - a must each year.  The first work you see is in the central courtyard ’From Landscape To Portrait’ by Chris Wilkinson RA.  An extremely strong arresting statement made from timber, stainless steel & concrete.  Inside the central Wohl hall has been painted a rich red, perfect backdrop for the abstract paintings.  We made our way to The Associates Gallery,   which was hung with smaller works in a wave design.  Personally the large gallery didn’t work as I prefer to see the smaller works hung in the small ‘Weston Room’ it’s a far more intimate setting.  The show is extremely divers with work by both talented young & old.  We particularly like work ‘no: 623’ (£66,000) by Martin Creeds a green neon sign the word ‘Dogs’ which could be interpreted in a manner of many things.  A more affordable price bracket was ‘Street Painting’ of Bath by Francis Callaghan at £380.  One work I really coveted was ‘Larousse’ a book sculpture by AlexanderKorzer-Robinson at £2,000 – clever use of defunct old encyclopaedia book.

The Atrium at Fortnum's

En route back to the tube we hit the tourist trail and went to ‘Fortnum & Mason’ to view the gorgeous food and confectionary on display.  To avoid the crowds on Piccadilly we took the more refined route back to the tube via Jermyn Street.  Here you will find Paxton &Whitfield Cheesemongers who have been trading for 200 hundred years, also English perfumers ‘Floris’ who have been trading for 280 years.  The tube was packed, at Paddington we met up with a friend Jo Clark (photographers agent) for coffee and a catch-up at ‘Paul’ French bakery – staff very friendly but the coffee and hot chocolate was pretty awful – so don’t bother.  The train departed at 19.48 and we arrived at Kemble 21.19, definitely a much easier way to travel to London.

Fortnum's Confectionery

Fortnum's Clock

Jermyn Street

Jermyn Street