Blankets & Throws

How can we live without them?

 Ok it's February, but in my experience it can be one of the coldest months and often one of the most depressing. Winter is still going and could go on through March for all we know, usually there is not much end in sight during February.

With heating bills rocketing who can afford to turn up the thermostat, unless you are an investment banker. The solution is to wear wool!!!! And wrap yourself in a gorgeous vintage blanket.

From Welsh Vintage blankets to Retro French knitted throws, we've got something to suit everyone's taste. Even better, our blankets and throws are not mass produced but unique items with personality.

We've got a wonderful selection of blankets, throws and bedspreads all very competitively priced and to be found on our website www.dartyandpike.com

The return of the dinner party?

With Christmas fast approaching it's the time of year when we are all thinking about socialising with friends and family. But I wonder how many of us will hesitate before booking a table at a restaurant or suggestting an outing to a gastro pub. Nevertheless, sitting down to a meal with loved ones is one of life's great pleasures and if the recession is making you stop and think you might return to the business of entertaining at home.

It's a daunting prospect cooking for more than two people at once. Entertaining them at the same time while you lay the table, cook, serve food and time the next course is not something the TV cooks ever explain.

However, I think you get off to a crackingly good start if you've laid your table before guests arrive and if you lay it well. A beautifully laid table is an invitation to sit down, relax and enjoy. Even if you don't get the food quite right, or the timing of courses, if guests feel they are sitting down at a beautifully laid table with all the bits they will overlook a lot.





For me, making an effort to include all the classic bits of dinner tableware is key. Top of my list and often overlooked is flowers or some sort of foliage display but keep it small and be prepared to move it out the way as food arrives.

The other thing that's vital to enjoy food at home is serving plates and platters!!!!! I loathe turning up at a dinner party to have my food served up in the kitchen like a school dinner and brought to the table.

The other thing that is unbearable is no wine left on the table. Wine left out of reach in a kitchen or on a sideboard is basically rude to your guests, not many people do this but a recent acquaintance, a man with pretensions to running a gourmet restaurant no less, did exactly that.

We were sat down as though in a canteen, no wine was on the table nor was it offered until we had almost finished our main course. And while he must have thought himself a generous host stacking our plates high with food we were unable to finish what we'd been given and he visibly took ofence at this. Needless to say, we were relieved when the whole thing was over and we could go home and relax.


Allow guests to serve themselves veg, meat and wine. It will help people interact with each other as they pass things, politely, around. This is a lost art, this interacting over a dinner table mainly because we've got used to eating in restaurants where waiters bring things.

The key thing for me with a good dinner party is to create an event that everyone around the table feels comfortable with. That means you as host or hostess has to get yourself organised sufficiently well so that you can spend time enjoying the experience with your guests.

My other awful dinner party experience was at a friend's house where she too ferried food back and forth from the kitchen, handing food anxiously to you and then running off to hide. She rarely sat down with us and actually ate it was left to her other half to handle the conversation. If she did sit down it was momentary and there was certainly no lingering at the dinner table at the end of the meal. She was like a cat on amphetamines.

A canter through our cushion covers

You really can't have too many cushions but you can have too many mass produced ones.

All our cushion covers at darty & pike are strictly limited edition only, most are hand-made from rare vintage fabric.

Here's a selection of some of the cushion covers that are currently available.

You can buy via our Ebay shop.

Or contact us direct at email: dartyandpike1@gmail.com and pay using paypal or personal cheque, please allow 7 days for cheque clearance and a further 7 days for delivery.

Timeless Tweed. 

In rust, grey and black, we have available four cushion covers made from geninue Isle of Man tweed created in the 1970's for ladies tailored clothes.

The fabric is soft and supple, 100% wool, warm and gentle to the touch. Envelope enclosure with grey 25mm buttons.

Seen here on a very nice, slightly gothic leather covered dining room chair. Size is 17" x 17" to take an 18" x 18" cushion pad.
Price:  £22.99 + £3.50 p&p (pad not included).

Gorgeous thick 100% wool fabric in restful pink, cream and chocolate brown check with envelope closure and pale brown 35mm wooden buttons.

Again this fabric is soft and warm, warm, warm especially if combined with our 100% wool filled pad.
Four available in 19" x 19" size to take a 20" pad.
Price £20.00 + £3.50 p&p (pad not included). That's a bargain price for such a large and luxurious cushion cover.

This fabric was a real find. 

A 1940's French Vintage Chintz, the fabric is barkcloth. It's stunning up close with a wonderful rough texture.

A generous 19" x 19" with a top envelope enclosure with 30mm mother of pearl buttons.
Price £30 + £3.50 p&p (pad not included). £50 for 2 £4.50 p&p (pad not included).

Another wonderful vintage find this time from the 1950's. 

Gorgeous blue and magenta anemones crowd this fabric with bold green leaves.

The fabric is a lightweight barkcloth and the cushion cover has an envelope enclosure with pale brown 35mm wooden buttons.

Price £30 + £3.50 p&p (pad not included). £50 for two + £4.50 p&p (pad not included).

And moving swiftly on to the psychedelic '60's another fantastic French vintage fabric. 

Gorgeous graphic fabric in orange and sage green.

19" x 19" with an envelope enclosure with pale brown 35mm wooden buttons.

Price £30 free p&p (pad not included) £50 for two free p&p.

Contact me direct on dartyandpike1@gmail.com .

Time for Tea!

In recent years, the wonderful ritual of afternoon tea has seen an enthusiastic revival of interest. If you’ve got the time, it’s the best meal of the day, after breakfast (a meal best eaten in bed I feel).

Ideally, you want to be able to sit down to afternoon tea in someone’s home for a good leisurely natter. There should be a teapot! Now a scandalously under-used item. You also ought to have a milk jug, a sugar bowl, some tea-cups and saucers, and side plates to hold cake. Cake is another essential. 

But if you’re working, and far from home, this can be an impossible treat to pull off. I’ve got four tea place recommendations, personally experienced around the world, to suggest to the working tea drinker.

Years ago, when I was a student, I took a job in the long summer break teaching English to foreign students on a residential course at The Kings School in Ely. Within the early moments of my arrival, old hands were telling me about the superb afternoon tea to be had a stone’s throw away at The Old Fire Engine House. They weren’t wrong.

There was a selection of teas to choose from, fantastic home-made cake which is de riguer for any self respecting tea room but most special of all Gentleman’s Relish. It was the first time I’d ever had gentleman’s relish and you have to be an anchovy lover to appreciate it. Home-made at the Fire Engine, and thinly but effectively spread on crunchy slices of also home-made wholemeal bread, it was a leisurely and unforgettable experience.

Thanks to the internet, I discover that this tea-place is still there and thriving. They are now open in the evening for what looks to be delicious food. 

http://www.theoldfireenginehouse.co.uk/

If you're in Ely, Cambridgeshire, don't go anywhere else for tea. 

A decade or so later, and my life is very different. No real time for afternoon tea any more, and during a three-month contract working in New York, no decent tea to be found. I know Starbucks does tea, and I did develop a taste for their iced Chai with soya milk, but it’s not the same.

I drink coffee more than I drink tea so you wouldn’t have thought it mattered. But something to do with home-sickness crept in and even though I was having an exciting time filming round New York, jumping in and out of yellow taxi cabs with my camera crew, I was becoming desperate for a real cup of tea.

I thought I’d solved my problem when I discovered a twee teashop on the Upper West Side. I sat down ordered tea and cake but was bitterly disappointed. It was the usual problem of tea abroad, it’s made by Liptons, a brand I’ve never seen on sale in the UK, the water used is never hot enough, the tea is then really weak so you taste the water and the milk is all wrong: terrible cup of tea. I left depressed and more homesick than ever.

Eventually, risking ridicule with the Aussie sound recordist, of being called a whingeing pom, I moaned. I thought he’d understand better than the cameraman, a native New Yorker. Why hadn’t I moaned sooner!

He said don’t panic, you need Tea and Sympathy. I certainly do, I said. And that’s what I got. 

Tea and Sympathy is a tea room come café (in the British sense) where it’s possible to get proper tea, baked beans, marmite and other British delicacies the rest of the world doesn’t understand.

http://teaandsympathynewyork.com/home.php 

I rushed in there between filming assignments and asked for the largest mug of tea they could manage, sadly to go. And it was good.

I’ve had many other tea experiences abroad since then, but another stands out because of the location and the company… and the tea was pretty good too.

Arriving in Mexico City, with two Venezuelan researchers, from sea level Miami, I and they were hit by altitude sickness. Mexico City is dizzingly high up. The first time you go there, it will take you a minimum of three days for your body, and your blood stream, to adjust. My Venezuelan research team advised caution. No rushing around, no trying to do too much. We should take it easy, see the sights, not walk too far and sit down a lot. South Americans are very wise. 

We carefully walked out of the hotel and headed for the Zocalo, the main square in Mexico City where the remains of an Aztec temple lie beneath your feet and a huge cathedral built by the conquering Spaniards exists at one end. By the time we got there we all felt weird. I said I needed tea.

 One researcher declared that the best place to have tea was the Palacio de Bellas Artes. He would be honoured to take us there, and it would be an important personal experience for him, to take tea, with a real English-woman in the stunning tea room there. Off we staggered. 

He was right. If you are ever in Mexico City go to the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It’s a fascinating Art Deco arts centre, full of the usual graphic motifs of that era combined with unique, and rather strange to European eyes, Mexican/Aztec touches in the architecture both inside and out. It’s walls are home to some great murals by Diego Rivera and Orozco. It was a place I used to telephone during my very first research job in telly, to get transparencies of those murals for a BBC arts documentary series called The Buried Mirror, presented by the great and very gracious Mexican, Carlos Fuentes.

We had a cup of tea and some cake. My Venezuelan researcher firmly reiterated my instructions to the waiter that the water must be boiling, piping and painfully hot before being poured over the tea bag. When the tea arrived and we all drank, my researcher nodded sagely and contentedly. His experience was complete. I, the English-woman had been absolutely right, tea had to be made in this way with the very hottest of water to be found. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I'm actually of Spanish/Scottish origin nor go into teapot details and the milk first or milk second debate. Then we had another cuppa. Unforgettable.

http://www.bellasartes.gob.mx/index.php/gale.html 

And finally, back to the city of my birth, lovely London town where a cup of tea is never hard to find. You can have afternoon tea in any number of posh London hotels, where they will do the works for you, no instructions required, with bells on. Or department stores, or little greasy spoon cafes (some still exist). Starbucks still doesn’t manage a great cup of tea in London though it is better than their New York effort.

So who to suggest here.

http://www.peytonandbyrne.co.uk/

Peyton and Byrne is a tea shop that has a number of branches which cleverly give you all the old fashioned virtues of a good cup of tea and fantastic cake with a freshened up contemporary brand. You can also have coffee there, if you must.

Is it the lovely turquoise blue of their shops? or the bread and cakes they also sell? or the fabulous buttermilk raisin scones (much better than the glutenous muffin everyone is obsessed with) who knows? 

They’ve got various branches cleverly placed where you need them. My favourite is in St. Pancras International station where you can grab yourself a fantastic cup of British tea before hopping on the Eurostar to wonderful Paris.

French Vintage Enamelware

You don't realise how useful this stuff is until you find yourself in the garden or kitchen, needing something to put water in, hold freshly picked raspberries or wash out potatoes. You reach out, and there it is, a bit battered and chipped but honestly ready to do you a service. 


The enamelled jug, or plate or pot has an innocence to it, an unpretentious cheerfulness  as it knocks about and fits in with your life. 


The simplicity of design that you find in many of the French vintage enamelware is the key to its value. This pitcher, or ewer, is aesthetically an ideal. The line of the handle, long and curved, not only adds to the beauty of the piece but when you pick it up to pour, it's perfect. You tilt, and the water pours out, steadily and generously. The effort required, on your part, is minimal; engineered loveliness gets the job done. And, as always with any object that has had many owners, you find yourself wondering who they were and how their life-story might have gone. 

A lot our cookware nowadays is coated with Tefal or other toughened finishes. Most of what's available comes in black or brushed steel. It looks very 'smart urban' and easy to clean but none of it has the charm of multi-coloured enamelware. 


The process of enamelling has been with us for centuries and is not unlike the way glass is made. Salts, metal oxides, clay and water are used to make enamel which is then heated to a very high temperature until the mixture becomes liquid. Then it can be applied to almost any metal object. 

Enamel is strong, conducts heat very well and is stain resistant. Over a very long period of time though, it will corrode if used to boil water or acidic liquids. 


You can see this in many of the vintage enamel jugs, pans and platters we have for sale but this ageing process only adds to their charm. You can of course, buy enamel paint to repair chips and cracks but who would want to. You'd only be rubbing out a piece of history. 

Antique French White Linen Cushion covers

After much hard work, and sourcing of some beautiful fabric, cushion cover production has finally sprung into action. My favourite fabric at the moment is a real joy, French vintage white linen, now very hard to find.

Years ago, several decades in fact, when a woman got married it was standard practice to enter the new marital home with a trousseau, pride of place was a full set of good, high quality bed linen, and it was real linen in many cases.

The top sheet often had an embroidered monogram. This identified, and celebrated the status of the newly married couple, but it also helped the laundry work out whose bed linen belonged to whom.

Embroidery of the monogram, would have been done by close relatives - a mother, an aunt, a cousin, or even the bride herself. Sadly, in the age of fitted sheets and washing machines, bed linen is now a much more prosaic affair. The romance and love that went into these monograms is long gone.

In France, it's still possible to come across monogrammed linen bed-sheets. Some are old and worn in places, frequently repaired and seamed together down the years. Some I've come across are in immaculate condition, and look as if they've never been used. Every sheet, tells a story, or would if it could talk - babies born and more conceived, death, adultery, sleepless nights, who knows what else. One set of sheets I've found has the original monogram embroidered on it, but next to it had a smaller, machined set of initials, leading me to suppose they must have been later passed along, maybe to a grand-daughter or daughter in law.

It's hard not to be capitvated by the feel of linen, the way it falls and folds, it's durability, it's coolness and of course, over time it becomes softened and mellow. It's a timeless, classic fabric. White, of course, matches everything and nothing is more luxurious and relaxing to fall into on a hot day.

A set of plain white linen cushion covers is perfect for summer, though keep animals and children away from them. I've got a variety of sizes available both plain and with monograms, and other details added. Check out what's available at my ebay shop:

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/dartyandpike

Mismatched French vintage china

The tragedy of china is that it breaks. The question is: does this matter?

When it happens, yes, hugely. I've lost all sorts of wonderful plates, and most particularly coffee cups, hence my never-ending obsession with them.

But after the rainstorm passes, sunshine often follows. There is another life awaiting all the left-over cups, saucers and plates that otherwise might face life alone. The trick though, is being a good matchmaker.

The theme I've stuck to here, that is echoed in every piece, is gold and white. Any colour variations on individual plates don't matter. The other important element is type of china, here I've gone for all porcelain, or half-porcelain. The quality of the plate, the feel and look of each one is the same, whatever the colour or design.

Once you start adding a tea cup into the equation, the whole thing takes off and you start wanting tea, and cake, and possibly a cucumber sandwich. Broken china is forgotten, and a new ensemble is born.

Personally, with tea cup trios, I think it's the cup that's the most important thing and this one is very pretty and will match up with a lot of plate and saucer partners.