Twin Bird, Japan. Retro home bar accessories. 1970s

If you're lucky enough to have a home bar, and your home bar is styled in a retro theme, then here's the very thing for you.

A fabulously retro water jug and matching ice bucket. The metal jug and ice bucket have semi-transparent lids, plastic liners for double insulation and are in a bright lime green colour. The ice bucket is marked Twin Bird on the base. Probably made in Japan in the 1970s, these two eye-catching home bar accessories would look great next to a bowl of lemons and limes.

In fact, they look so good, I'm off to build my own bar right now. Cheers.

PS We've opened a little shop on Etsy. You can see it here: Potshots on Etsy 

Sweet simplicity in stainless steel.

 

Who was it that said 'Less is more'?

Do you find that sometimes, when you see and an object, it looks and feels just right? It may not be an expensive object – like this humble sugar shaker – but somehow you get the feeling that the designer got it spot on.

I do. And I did, when I found this stainless steel kitchen accessory in a local charity shop recently.

I suspect that simplicity is the key. And I imagine that it's not easy for a designer to get that just right: keeping to a perfectly symmetrical form, resisting the urge to add any decoration and carefully considering every small detail right down to the arrangement of the holes in the top. Simple but not easy.

As for the sugar shaker itself, all I know of it is that it was made in Britain by Chichester, I would guess around the late 1960s or early 1970s.

Sweet.

Teak, metal, modern design, it must be Danish.

There's something very pleasing about items made from teak and black metal, it's a common combination of materials in mid-century modern design. So I was very pleased to add this small 3-legged candle holder to the Potshots collection this week.

I'm afraid that I don't know a lot about it, though. I would guess it is from the late 1950s or early 1960s. I don't know who made it or where it comes from but would think it's likely to be Danish. Although the candle holder does not have a maker's mark, it has Denmark written all over it. The simple and elegant design, the modern shape and the use of such materials, all indicate that it is probably from Denmark. If you do know for sure, I'd love to hear from you.

The tops of the candle holders are a bit blackened now but they look to be in a brass coloured metal. A nice object. Would look great with some very tall candles.

Vintage Quality Street sweet tin. Happy retro Christmas.

In summer, I visited a local second-hand sale. After an hour searching through all the stalls, the only thing I bought was an old tin filled with buttons. The buttons cost just £1.00 but it was the tin that had caught my eye. Now December is here, I thought it would be good time to show it on the blogsite.

The tin is an old sweet tin, most likely from the 1950s or early 1960s. Produced for Mackintosh's Quality Street (still going strong today), the tin is decorated with some excellent vintage graphics. The colour combinations are perhaps not the most obvious, mid-blue, pale-yellow, pink and black but they somehow work together and they certainly evoke the era. A nice detail is the row of Christmas trees round the rim of the lid – remove the lid and another layer is revealed.

A nice tin. Sweet and quality, you could say.

Robert Welch Design in a Cotswold Workshop

Not a pot this time, a book. A very nice book.

I was lucky enough to find this fantastic reference book on the life and work of Robert Welch. Published by Lund Humphries, London in 1973, Robert Welch Design in a Cotswold Workshop is a beautiful book. Designed by the Pentagram Partnership, the page layouts and graphics are clean and simple, and the photography is superb.

The book is full of detailed descriptions and images of Robert Welch's elegant designs. It features some incredible silver, as well as lighting and ceramics. The stainless steel and cast iron objects are particularly interesting, not least because they can still be found out there at quite reasonable prices.

I would recommend anyone with an interest in the great designer's early work to beg, steal or borrow a copy of this book.

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