Come & experience the ins & outs of designing a commercial space. Sibella will hold court in one of the spaces she has designed. She will discuss the entire process: coming up with a brief, concept development, colour palette, furniture & finishes, installation & final touches. You will be able to understand how commercial interiors come to be through physical examples of the space that you are in. Chat with Sibella about how research & history creates a strong conceptual foundation & how the steps that follow are all based on this. Shopping, sourcing, creating a colour palette, applying an idea to space, considering seating & floorplan, arranging furniture & art installation & styling will all be discussed to show you how Sibella makes a commercial space work.

Location to be disclosed but it will be a venue that Sibella has designed in Sydney city within 15 minutes of The Society inc.

Long ago I read a book called Mr Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder. It was based on an out of the way place in LA that was around way before cabinet of curiosities reached the resurgence of coolness it now enjoys.

I have since wanted to visit the museum but to no avail for various reasons- until a recent 30 hour stint in La La Land.

An unassuming facade on Venice Boulevard, Culver City, it is a shade of green with an old brass buzzer engraved with its name, lovely and old school.

Due to my limited time & excuse of my next book, I made an appointment to view this enigma. The size of MJT is deceiving. We were greeted by Rachel who informed us that she would be leaving at 3pm with apologies. I was noon and the place appeared to be made up of just 3 rooms! Well, were we in for a surprise.

The museum is made up of two floors & roughly 20 rooms (I lost count so don’t quote me on that). Each room is intimate, dark & encourages you to look into, touch, listen or read. It is a realisation of one man’s (& his wife) vision.

The rabbit warren of rooms: part carneval, cabinet & curios, sideshow, history, circus, museum, gallery & exhibit. As you can see, it is impossible to categorise.

Each display is different with dioramas, holograms, microscopes, 3D glasses & listening devices installed for you to experience each installation in its own way. The installations are strange, intriguing & curious- but one wonders if these are historical or if they are fictional characters that have been created, philosoph-ied & imagined. Regardless, the experience is of marvel, joy, wonder, curiosity & mystery.

There is a big surprise on the top floor. You come out into a Moroccan Oasis of light after being in the dark for so long. It’s like your mind is being cleared from the huge amount of information intake downstairs and here you are cleansed and able to process all the wonderful things you have seen. There is a subtlety of colour, a bird singing in a large aviary and it is airy & light & lovely & white.

Note to self: leave plenty of time, hours disappear here.

Natural Christmas @ 
Glenmore House with Mickey Robertson

Embrace our gorgeous Summer weather by decorating your Christmas table with what nature & the garden have to offer. Follow Sibella on a spontaneous jaunt through Mickey’s ever-inspiring gardens- pick & choose tendrils, leafy greens, flowers, branches & anything else that takes your fancy.

Sibella will then translate them into decorating & table-setting ideas that can be used throughout Summer & for your Christmas table.

10:30am – Arrival & Morning Tea in The Dairy

10:45am – Short introduction by Sibella & Mickey outlining the programme for the day

11:00am – Chat with Mickey about restoring the buildings & making the garden at Glenmore House (and to be on tap for the rest of the day when not preparing food, to answer questions etc!)

11:30am – Garden Wander (for participants to familiarise themselves with the surroundings… & gather wth Sibella)

12:00 noon – Workshop with Sibella in The Hayshed

1:30pm – Time for lunch… a teacup of chilled beetroot soup & garden herbs, cucumber sandwiches, a glass of rhubarb syllabub (& jugs of Elderflower Cordial) – in the Loggia, picnic on the grass or under the trees…

Followed by fossicking in the barn…

3:00pm – Depart

Glenmore House
Glenmore House via Camden
NSW 2570
Australia
- Hannah will email directions through when you buy a ticket.

$200 per person for full day workshop, morning tea & lunch.

Please email hannah@thesocietyinc.com.au to secure a ticket for this workshop, get in quick limited numbers.

This workshop is for everyone of course, but would be especially perfect for all you collectors out there. So many beautiful things and no way to show them off! In this workshop I talk about & demonstrate my fascination with diaramas & domes, and show how they can be used to display your treasures & objet trouve.

The simple art of creating mini worlds under glass and displaying your odds & ends in 3D forms can be the most simple and perfect way to turn your tucked away collections into beautiful still-lifes.

Bottle of wine, open mind & treasures necessary!

Leta Keens the editor of my third book, Nomad, but a like-minded spirit who I adore & admire as well as author of must-have book, ‘Shoes for the Moscow Circus’. Leta hosted and discussed old-fashioned trades that continue to thrive in Australia. Her fascination & long history with specialized crafts people & their interesting workshops inspired her content & photographic record in ‘Shoes for the Moscow Circus’. She ‘showed-and-told’ some of the trades in her book which cover broom-makers, doll parts, flag structuring & of course shoes for the Moscow circus amongst many others. It was an absolute pleasure & hit.

“Twenty-odd years ago I visited a terrazzo factory. It wasn’t the first factory I’d ever visited – as a kid, I’d been to some distant relative’s clock factory, and gone on a school excursion to a biscuit factory and then, on a working holiday in England, had a short-lived job counting nuts and bolts in a handmade car factory. But the terrazzo factory was the first one that made a lasting impression – the old Italians working there, the great stacks of terrazzo in pastel tones, the rusty old 44 gallon drums full of intensely coloured pigment, and just the fact that something could look like nothing from outside, and be completely gorgeous inside. I wrote about that factory in a magazine that closed down soon after…and so did the factory. For years, I thought it would make a fantastic series in a magazine – visiting factories and writing about them. But the right magazine didn’t exist. Luckily for me, a publisher asked me to write a book.

Shoes for the Moscow Circus is a celebration of trades & industries – dirty words in our society, I’ve realised. I visited more than 25 factories & workshops for the book (including an umbrella factory, a broom factory and a place that makes robes for clergy) and what I found was completely unexpected. In the workshop I’d like to share some of those discoveries – of the people, most of whom don’t realise they’re doing anything special; the places, which ranged from an oversized shed in a suburban street to a semi-industrial complex; and the amazing objects they make, many of which are better known overseas than they are here.”

Leta