Saturday, November 05, 2016

New Zealand road trip: Day one

(Unimaginative title, I know. But I figured if I waited and ruminated on a suitably witty title, the blog post may never get written...)

First stop on the trip itinerary was Archway Books: one of our favourite second-hand books shops, located on the way out of town in Pukerua Bay. 
Interior of a second-hand bookshop, with full shelves and stacks of books on the counter.
We'd not managed to visit the last couple of times I'd been in the country, so I was looking forward to seeing what treasures they had waiting for me to find. For this reason,  I'd specifically not brought any books with me to read on the trip (even though I knew that was tempting fate by doing that...)

I was in luck. So were The Parental Units. Here's our combined book stack on the first night of our trip:
Large stack of second-hand books on a coffee table in a mid-century modern living room.
(Only the bottom four are mine. I say 'only' ironically, as three of them were both the heaviest of our finds, and the most expensive. But how could I leave behind a biography James Walter Chapman-Taylor, the New Zealand arts and crafts architect who created a house we were planning to visit later in the trip? Or one on Len Lye, the New Zealand kinetic artist whose work we were also planning to visit?)

Oh: and that deliciously mid-century-modern lounge? Our Airbnb choice for our night in Whanganui.
Outside view of a 1960s mid-century-modern holiday house.
 Which contained
Mid-century modern kitchen.
 lots of
Corner of a mid-century modern bedroom with a replica Eames/Saarinen Organic Chair in the corner.
miniature inspiration, 
Floor rug made of a piece of vintage Axminster floral carpet.
Speaking of miniature inspiration: my first miniature purchases of the trip were two screen-printed wooden brooches by Russell Brown, which I found in the Sarjeant Gallery gift shop, and which I hope to use as wall art in a miniature scene very soon...

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