Snow Black in the morning light

Ever since I can remember I have been obsessed with the layout of interior spaces. When I was little someone (probably santa) bought me sylvanian family figures and a house to match. For anyone who doesn't remember them, sylvanian families were figures of animals a couple of inches tall, most people got a family of say 4 rabbits, but I somehow ended up with something like a mum and dad rabbit who'd given birth to a mole and a cat (way to mess me up santa), anyway, back to my point...I wasn't really sold on the house and used to instead get out all the video tapes (sorry mam and dad) and lay them out on the living room floor, building rooms out of them for my strange little animal family. I also repeated this video-house making for my hamster years later who didn't seem to appreciate it as much as i'd hoped...
A totally normal/conventional Sylvanian family..

I then progressed to studying plans of houses whenever we got a leaflet about a new estate being built, and used to re arrange the furniture in my bedroom on a regular basis. Years later I went on to study Interior Architecture, now why didn't I make models for projects from video tapes? I'm sure with some good lighting I could have passed it off as installation art and fooled everyone into thinking i was an interior genious.
I haven't designed an interior for quite some time but I am still fascinated by housing and space layouts so for the past week I've been reading Bill Bryson's book-A short history of private life I like Bill Bryson because he's a massive research geek. In this book he looks at the history of the place we call home, one of the things i read was that during the Italian Renaissance period, rooms didn't have specific functions as they do today, such as bedroom, living room etc, they simply moved their furniture and belongings according to where the light was coming into the house at that time, therefore during "mattina" (or morning) they would move furniture and set themselves up in a room with morning light streaming in and during "sera" (the evening) they would again move their furniture into a space with evening sun. This fascinated me, although interiorists now consider sunlight when laying out their interiors, there is a beautiful simplicity about how things were set out during this time.
Although I am a massive hoarder of just about everything, I sometimes wish I had one flat for storage and one for living, in the flat I lived in I would love to simply move my furniture around according to the sun. On a morning I would move my (totally imaginary) chaise lounge (i have always wanted one) into a room with sunlight streaming in, and sit there feeling the warmth on my skin; I would set up my drawing pens and paper and listen to music, I'd draw fuelled by amaretto coffee and have everything (including the cat) nearby so i didnt have to move all morning, i'd wear my really old nightdress thats so old it only fits as a top now because the 20 years of wear have made the fabric silky soft, i'd team it up with some shorts and a pair of long socks to keep warm..




check back next week to find out where i'll be during the evening!!