Wild Thing in red emerald by Lewis & Wood

The fabric sample above is a detail of Wild Thing in red emerald, a linen fabric by Lewis & Wood that I have been admiring for months. Last autumn they sent me a stack of textile samples and this particular piece was the first thing that caught my attention. I had seen the fabric in its entirety - 'a bold large print pattern featuring foliage, flowers and wildlife' - on their website and cannot say it particularly interested me, perhaps because there seemed to be too much going on; it was too wild for me. When I turned it over to view the information on the back I honestly thought the sample had been wrongly labelled. When my mind finally began registering that this was in fact the Wild Thing fabric I realised how important it is to focus on the details of fabrics before judging.

The motifs of the fabric are flowers, leaves, birds and a monkey. What makes the fabric so interesting to me is the way the dyes are unrestricted. There are outlines but the dyes are both inside and outside the lines, which makes the design even wilder and more vibrant.

Wild Thing in red emerald and ginger kiwi by Lewis & Wood

The Wild Thing fabric is available in three colourways: copper cobalt, ginger kiwi, and the aforementioned red emerald. I think the copper cobalt fabric (below) is ideal for those who perhaps want to play it a little safer but for me the red emerald is the winner. I can easily picture it as my future bedroom curtains.

Wild Thing in copper cobalt by Lewis & Wood

Deborah Turbeville's 'Casa No Name'

Last Friday I told you I had snapped a few photos of a Mexican home that I promised to share. The house tour appeared in the December 2015 issue of The World of Interiors, in a feature called Destination unknown, lensed by Ricardo Labougle. The house belonged to the late fashion photographer Deborah Turbeville (1932-2013), who lived a nomadic life. She named it Casa No Name. It's located in the historic city San Miguel de Allende, in Guanajuato. When Turbeville bought the house it was in a terrible state, but if you are familiar with her photography it is easy to understand why it fascinated her. A friend of hers, who oversaw the two-year restoration told the workers to 'not ... make too perfect a job of it, for "The señora likes it that way"' (p. 190). There is no one thing that draws me to this house; it's the richness of it that captivates me, the gorgeous blend of patterned textiles, colours, plaster walls, the breathtaking roof terrace . . . this is what they mean when they talk about turning a house into a home.

In 2009, Rizzoli published the book Casa No Name by Turbeville herself. I have seen some of the images from the book and I cannot say it's a book for everyone. Let's just say that it's a different interior design book with a lot of blurry images. Hard-core Turbeville fans will probably love it.

I found a short interview with Turbeville on YouTube, taken at Casa No Name when Toast was shooting their Spring/Summer 2010 lookbook there.

For everyone interested in fashion photography I would recommend the book Deborah Turbeville: The Fashion Pictures. It's also published by Rizzoli and you will find in it the infamous bathhouse photos, which shocked when they appeared in Vogue in 1975.

images by me | credit: The World of Interiors, December 2015, Destination unknown, pp. 182-191 · Ricardo Labougle