VAN

Part review, part tribute post, to the book ‘HOME’

Recently, I’ve been rather obsessed with Home by India Knight, I’ve bought the book, loved reading it, am sure I’ll be dipping into it for months/years to come, not to mention the digital magazine of the same name.

The weekend supplement’s here, remind me of shopping and browsing gorgeous boutiques, but curated for me, whilst chatting with friends over coffee and all without leaving my chair, never mind my van!

If you’re looking for that last minute gift, it’s for anyone who loves their home, it’s also perfect for people like me, who don’t really have a home (I clarify say a traditional bricks and mortar home!) Simply put, buy two or more copies, you’ll definitely want to keep a copy for yourself. You can get it here.

This got me thinking, why did I fall in love with this book so much when strictly speaking, we don’t actually have a home of our own

Our home for most of the year is a motorhome, and the rest of the time is spent renting other people’s homes.

The book focuses on the feeling of home, yes there’s decor and ‘stuff’, we still have that, there’s beautiful cushions, bedding and blankets and artwork that travels with us, just perhaps less of it, there’s the food and recipes we return to and all the different ways we make our van feel like home, are also in this book. It’s funny, it’s practical and most delightfully it doesn’t contain any trends!

As a child aged 7 or 8, I got in trouble for looking through other people’s windows.

Walking home from school one day, my friends told me they could see our dinner lady through her front window. I couldn’t, so I pressed myself up against the glass and cupped my hands around my face for a better look.

She shouted and chased us up the street afterwards, and the public humiliation I endured at school the next day still gives me nightmares.

It did start a lifelong fascination with how other people live, how they decorate and the different types of homes other people live in. These days, I’ve refined the technique into a very casual side-eye while walking past houses I’d love a closer look at. If you don’t turn your head fully, and don’t stick you face in the window head on 😂, it’s much more discreet.

I think I always knew I’d end up living a bit unconventionally. When I was even younger than my nosy parker incident, my older brother pointed at a new estate of brown brick houses and told me I’d probably live in a house like them one day.

I remember feeling very strongly about this at the time, I was sure, I would never live in a brown box.

I couldn’t pinpoint why, but I just knew, I wanted to live differently to everyone else and not necessarily in a house. When I was very young I had my eye on a fairytale castle which then morphed into different types of homes.

There was a close call with a falling apart narrow boat in my twenties that my parents expertly manoeuvred me away from, but I’ve lived everywhere, from apartments in France, then New York, to, well, I lost count of the quirky homes I rented in London. I can’t say any of them ever felt like home, they were ‘bases’.

Now some forty plus years later we are home, living in a generously equipped 8m x 3m home that has wheels, one persistent leak and it rattles.

We have favourite recipes, favoutite Ninja frying pan, Le Creuset whistling kettle, one of seven luxury beds for the dog, glowing lighting for cosy evenings in, it’s usually Yorkshire Tea not Typhoo but we order in bulk so as not to run out, lastly we bring real glasses and our wedding crockery, nothing made of melamine here!

Of course, life being life, I’ve lived in plenty of brown boxes, so my brother was right. I even bought one once. But none have stuck. I’ve never settled anywhere and change has been the one constant. It didn’t take too long after meeting my husband for us to realise, he felt exactly the same way as me.

So we’ve never ‘settled down’ anywhere, trying out different locations, countries, flats, houses etc and I guess this is the whole point of the book, it’s not about a flash ‘show home’ or a permanent forever home, it’s finding all those things that, uniquely to you, make you feel at home and surrounding yourself with them wherever and whatever your ‘home’ might be.

The top illustration was very much inspired by the book cover, designed by Dan Jackson and I must mention Anna Hymas too, the artist of the still life painting on the front cover.

The cover, the contents, and the rabbit holes I’ve gone down as a result of reading Home have all been huge inspirations for me, so I’m leaving you this week with an illustration.

I’m a sucker for those cutaway house illustrations so here’s one of our van which includes all our ‘homey’ touches and like the illustration at the top of this post is heavily influenced by the colour palette of the book cover.

Top Tip! If you’re an artist and you get a bit stuck in a rut, try playing with the colour palette of another artist, it works for me!

PS If you also like looking in other peoples windows, you might like my series of interviews with other artists where they share their workspaces, with me, amongst other things - read here.

PPS And while we’re talking about last minute Christmas Gifts, there is ‘just’ time to get one of my dog portraits, either as a gift voucher (instant delivery so available worldwide, you get a .pdf to print at home) or one of my art prints (for art prints order today, worldwide delivery). And for my US and Canadian friends, there’s my Hounds calendar from Barnes & Noble.