Peppers in situ!

Do you remember that earlier in the year I was working on some small pieces which I told you about under the general heading of peppers?

Well these pieces, hand painted monoprints with collage and stitch (I guess what you would call mixed media!) were always destined for the delicatessen which is run by two good friends of mine. This is called the larder and is on the Castle Ashby estate in Northamptonshire.

Castle Ashby is a beautiful house on the road between Northampton and Olney. The house itself is not open to the public. I think it is still in private ownership but it is used as a venue so I think you could book it for weddings and big parties (I wish!) However, it does have an absolutely lovely garden which is open to the public and is well worth a visit if ever you should find yourself in Northamptonshire with nothing to do.

The little shopping yard where the delicatessen is, is also worth a visit. There are some really lovely shops there actually. There is a delightful little jewellery gallery called Boo Gallery, which has very unusual handmade silver items of jewellery. Lovely! The girl who owns it is also very nice and very helpful. We had a chat when I was there and she suggested that she could make a bracelet, a bit like a charm bracelet, from the single earring collection but I seem to have created (where I have inadvertently lost one of a pair of earrings). What a brilliant idea! I'm definitely going to look into this!

But back to the deli!

The plan for the delicatessen is to open a small eatery at one end of the building (which I should tell you was once a cowshed! Though the cows have long since moved out). Tony and Tracy, the owners, could have just bought some very boring furniture for the little space to be used as the eatery. However, they thought this would be a wasted opportunity so commissioned two local girls who specialise in up cycling discarded pieces of furniture (and, well to be honest, junk!). They are called 'Snog the Frog' ( really! ) and you can find out about them here. And they are very good fun!

So here is one corner of the little eatery, with a rather funky lamp!  You might recognise that it is an upturned bucket, a metal pail, with slats cut out for the light to shine through. Genius!

Oh, and there are two of the pepper pieces on the wall!