Quick trip to Riga

This year everyone at New House has been busy making our new collections. We have loads of new Homeware items from Charlotte Farmer, Laura Fletcher and Marian Westman on our Top Drawer stand at Olympia, London next month .

Meanwhile our 2-year megaproject has been our new roller and blind accessory collection that'll be revelled at the BBSA Showcase show in October.

With such a lot going on, I've only sneaked a week's holiday and went to Riga. The city is choca with amazing Art Deco buildings and these are a few I took pics of :

 

 

 

I loved the parks and public spaces. In one they seemed to be holding the Flintstones Olympics : 

 

 

A cute custom is when you get engaged or married, your local locksmith engrave your names onto a padlock that you secure to a bridge, and throw the key into the river. :

Riga has plenty of glitz and this (awful) car took the buscuit

One of the famous symbols is the 'black cat' perched onto of a building. Apparently the architect was so annoyed by criticism from his fellow architects from the Great Guild, he sited the cat so it's bottom directly faced them.

I loved the old Stalinist buildings :

 

 

But the most interesting part of the trip for a designer like me, was Latvia's folk museum of old buildings. They built with such economy from the materials they had. It was a lesson to me.:

 

 

an old beehive



There are some fantastic paintings in the Riga National Gallery The Russian father & son Roerich family were a revalation to me, and I thought the portraits were amazing. I especially liked this one as it was so fluid :