REMEMBER - WHAT THE DORMOUSE SAID...

I think what is nice about running a small design practise is that it allows you the freedom to be creative, to work for those one-off clients who allow you to indulge yourself, who don't want the corporate branded look but something with a degree more individuality, more flair. One of the projects I have most enjoyed recently was working on the hotel for Velvet, on Canal Street in Manchester - 19 bedrooms, all different, for a client who wanted that little extra . If you haven't seen it on the RCA Interiors website, have a look at the hotel gallery at http://www.velvetmanchester.com/

The couple of sketches shown here, firstly as a line drawing and then fully coloured , are for another one-off scheme set in the Gay Village in Manchester - this time a tea-room. The brief from the client was simply to be over the top , be as camp as we like, with possibly a background reference to the Mad-Hatters Tea Party in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.....' Eat me.......Drink me '...........a nice brief and a quick sketch, good fun.....whether it will be built like this I don't know, but we can hope.

The tea-room is to be set on the ground floor of Richmond House on Bloom Street , of particular interest to me as I know the building well and have identified it as ' The House for a Book-Lover ' , to be developed as an idealised scheme on my upcoming M.A. course. A literary tea room fits in rather neatly with a book-lover's house......

...and remember what the dormouse said....' Feed your head, Feed your head '....