One of the main reasons for visiting Hoi An was to find the lanterns the area is famous for. A monthly lunar festival is held on the full moon, where the whole town is lit up with lanterns. Although we missed the festival, we found the makers of the collapsible bamboo structured lanterns. I am not a fan of the silk used, so we designed our own for One Kings Lane in lots of shapes & sizes.

Hoi An is a coastal town, once the main trading port of Vietnam & largely built by the Japanese & Chinese. Beautiful old shop fronts line the street selling their wares. The buildings & their facades fascinated me more than the most of the souvenirs. Bouganvillea & other climbing flowers drip from the eaves & faded lanterns look beautiful against chalky walls of turquoise & yellows. Walk the streets of Phan Boi Chau & have a look at the colonial riverside building that houses Brother’s Café. Wander through the central market for bamboo baskets, fruit & vegetable, handloomed natural mats, kitchen utensils & everything else. Cross over to Ngyen Thai Hoe to the lantern shop and pop your head into some of the historic houses. Then finish for lunch at the 2-story Mango Mango looking over the river. This is owned by gun slinging Vietnamese American, Duc. Delicious food, with a mix of subtle Vietnamese, Japanese & fresh produce flavours (leave room for  coconut & passionfruit ice cream).

Best to do this in the morning before it’s too hot or in the afternoon & then finish at Duc’s other restaurant, Mango Room.

It is easy to spend days walking the streets of old town, Hanoi. Cruise Noodle & Potato Streets amongst all the other specialty streets. I was looking for handcrafted bits’n’bobs to put in my October container sale for One Kings Lane. I found giant hanging incense, handforged scissors, bamboo birdcages, feather shuttlecocks, handcarved stamps, and even bamboo bicycles!

A pitstop whilst shopping in Hanoi took us to uber cool cafe, Cong Caphe. You enter through a green door into a simple, yet perfect interior. Wooden floors & tables of soft mid tone browns, surrounded by antique wooden & found chairs, padded with chinese cotton print cushions. Lounge chairs are also in the mix, both upstairs & downstairs, & the light throughout is gorgeous.

The kitchen is teeny tiny with no cooked food on the menu, but plenty of yoghurt drinks, crossiants & other delicious things.

Check out the menu, beautifully handwritten in hardcovered old books. The tables are adorned with stenciled enamelware, fully blown roses against a backdrop of army green walls & exposed brick.

There are 2 locations in Hanoi (&rumour of opening in London)

152Đ-Triệu Việt Vương, Hai Bà Trưng

32-Điện Biên Phủ, Ba Đình

And on my early beach walk this morning, they were revealed in all their fascinating sculptural beauty. The beach up from super fancy hotel , The Nam Hai was scattered with them. Looking like beached whales, they are woven, then tarred for water resistance with a single loop rope on their perimeter to hold a carved wooden paddle. I watched as a fisherman rode a wave into shore maneuvering with circular motions of the paddle. He was as wirey & thin as a whippet!

They will definitely be appearing in the sale, I just have to convince a couple of fisherman to part with their baskets!

This is my latest interior collaboration with Justin Hemmes & his lovely sister, Bettina – Mr Wong. A 250 seat restaurant housed in an old warehouse built around the 1850s. Two storeys & although it has ginormous proprtions it feels intimate, warm & full of discoveries.

We used alot of green tones! Particularly in the recycled timber floors inlaid with diagonally laid morroccan tiles. I had Ecuadorian ‘vegetable ivory’ beads coloured, dyed & knotted into giant strands to hang as a screen to a ‘private’ dining room.

My legendary signwriter, Will created a masterpiece on the stairwell: an old-style gold & silver leaf (320 sheets of gold leaf were used) mirrored advertisement, as well as adding layer throughout the space with handwritten signage on walls, mirrors and furniture.

The bar joinery was based on a bar I loved in Seville with its curved edges and pegs and a famous siren from the 1920s was applied by our scenic painters to the downstairs wall. Mountains of old Asian cabinetry hardware was hand tacked to one length of the upstairs wall (yes, my wrist did hurt for months after).

Parisian bistro chairs were bespoke in our own colour palette & pattern, after I was inspired by their durability & timelessness on a trip to Paris plus loads of vintage lighting, Italian lighting & lamps where installed throughout the space.

Custom shelving lines the walls filled with pantry staples, Chinese medicinal herbs & other magic things in old glass apothecary jars along  with pots & vessels of all shapes & sizes.

A shared love of Asian colonial made this the unexampled unique place imagined in our minds, giving the old warehouse a new lease on life, even though it feels like its always been there.