LIVE24SEVEN // Property & Interiors John Biddell A PILLAR TO RELY ON
John Biddell has owned and run John Charles Interiors, based in Edgbaston, for more than 30 years, his wealth of knowledge and experience in Interior design and soft furnishings will add depth to our property and interiors section and give you, the reader, invaluable help with the process of decorating your home.
A few months ago I was wittering on about how there are two main product launches for manufacturers in the interior design industry. One is in the autumn, timed to roughly coincide with Decorex the main trade show of the year, and to hopefully grab that manufacturer a good slice of the Christmas business. (By way of a primrose path, I remember that when I first came into the trade some fifty million years ago you’d do at least half of your year’s business between the end of September and Christmas. We would all be out fitting curtains late into the night during Christmas week, negotiating round Christmas trees and trying not to step on the newly wrapped presents. Thankfully it’s not quite so manic these days, as things seem to be a bit more spread out. Anyway, I digress.) The second major launch season is in the spring. It’s not usually quite as grand as autumn, but is still worth a trip to London to trawl round the various showrooms taking part in London
Design Week – or Focus on Design, or whatever it happens to be called this year.
I also mentioned that several of the more canny companies have begun to bring forward their launches in an effort to ensure that we designers purchase their pattern books ahead of the competition. It’s one of those companies that I’d like to write about this month.
Osborne & Little have long been a favourite of mine. Maybe it’s their eclectic mix of products, maybe it’s their inherent sense of style, or maybe that they just seem to keep getting it right season after season. I suspect that it’s a mixture of all these things, coupled with the devil’s own job that I had getting an account with them in the first place. This was of course in the Eighties, when most of the better-end companies were so far up their own bottoms as to be practically invisible. I think they finally agreed to even visit me on about my third try. But I’m glad they did, as I really do think they are one of the pillars of today’s industry. I remember someone saying to me that they’d heard that one of the principals of Osborne & Little was related to
somebody famous. They were probably referring to the fact that Sir Peter Osborne is the father of George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I was soooooo tempted to say “Yes, it’s a long-standing collaboration between Ozzy Osborne and Sid Little (of Little & Large fame, for you youngsters)”. I’m chuckling now, just imagining the type of product that relationship would have spawned.
Osborne & Little were early pioneers of the painterly paper, with fabulous ranges of marbles, stuccos and shagreens – some of which have been re-coloured, and are still selling well to this day. They were also responsible for the myriad of stars – both in papers and fabrics - that was utterly ground-breaking when Osborne & Little launched them, but subsequently became the unfortunate victim of the cheap copyist. So much so that you could hardly venture into any downstairs cloakroom without being bombarded by stars on the walls, stars on the ceiling, and yes, even stars on the toilet seat !!!!
The lovely folks from Osborne & Little came in soon after Christmas to show us
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Photographs Courtesy of Osborne and Little
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