I flew back to Sydney in August to shoot this summer bbq story for the launch issue of Home Basics, a new magazine put out by Shannon Lush and Jen Fleming (writers of ‘Spotless’). August is winter in Australia and I can tell you, it was hotter and sunnier than it was here in Europe for Summer! The story brief was to create a table setting that was loose, real and simple. The colour palette was to be yellows, blues with a backdrop of craft-paper brown. So this is what I came up with, taking the craft-paper brown as a literal background and using it as a tablerunner. I was inspired by these beautiful wattle branches I saw in a florist and dotted them around the table in little glass vases. Gayna Murphy, the art director, had found these fab old plates of all sorts of colours so I set the table with these mix-matches of plates and old cutlery. I made these little paper flower centre pieces from coloured cupcake cups, beads and ribbon. And I used fabric swatches that I have picked up over the years from designers and printmakers. The beautiful blue fabric swatch (called ‘The Cranes’) is from the Florence Broadhurst collection at Signature Prints.
