It's all in the Packaging...

I had intended to post a kind of photo diary of our all our jolly jaunts last week but then, on Friday, Mr Roses announced that we were off to London for the day, on a jolly that I had been wanting to do for quite some time. We decided to do something for everyone, a trip to an exhibition that Mr Roses had been wanting to see, a trip to Hamleys for Little Sister and, of course, to Topshop for Big Sister.



What better way to start an action packed day in London than a mooch around Notting Hill. We wander through the streets and market stalls of Portobello and, if it weren't for the million and one things we had planned to do, could quite easily have spent the day there. If you're going up soon, try and pop into the falafel bar on Portobello Road, we had the best lunch in ages.



After a quick detour involving walking up and down the lovely rows of houses and playing our favourite "If you could have just one house which would it be" game, we arrived at our destination. I have been wanting to come here to the Museum of Brands and Packaging for a long, long time.


Please click on the images to enlarge them

I love ephemera and vintage packaging and have often wondered if the collection here would live up to my expectations - it certainly did. I was in vintage packaging heaven! I think the rest of the Roses thought the trip worthwhile just to see the look on my face, honestly I didn't know what to do with myself!!!
Packaging, leaflets, posters and ephemera from World War Two:



Look at that sign asking you to bring your own paper to wrap your purchases, perhaps we should be doing the same thing today.



Household items have never looked so good. Almost makes you want to get the duster out.



Sweets and chocolates that brought back so many memories for me - I was back in my sweet shop as a little girl choosing my mother's Christmas box of chocolates and choosing my favourite sweets.



A history of packaging from Victorian times up to the present day. A hotch potch of wonderful imagery and graphics. A social history that you could drool over. I must admit looking through the shelves and shelves and shelves of goodies it was the most recent additions that disappointed.



Would we really be drooling over our packaging in years to come?
I can't recommend this museum enough, it may be small but what's that saying? "Good things come in small packages..." If only there had been some for sale!!!!!



How do you recover from a place like that? Why you jump on a tube, walk quickly along the Embankment and arrive at the Courtauld Gallery, one of our favourite art galleries in town. After all that rushing we really wished we'd brought a change of clothes and hopped into some of those fountains down in the courtyard of Somerset House, looks like so much fun.



We had promised ourselves we wouldn't miss theBloomsbury Exhibition that was on here. A small exhibition that had some fabulous examples of fabrics, textiles and designs that the Bloomsbury group produced for the Omega Workshops. A great display. There was also a small exhibition of Winifred Gill's designs and prints including some for toys she had intended to be made for the workshops.
We wandered quickly through some of the other galleries, gawping at the Cezannes, Renoirs, Manets but were very conscious of the Rosebuds desire to go shopping. So a whistlestop tour this time, with just enough time to visit the gallery shop where we made a few purchases:



I wish!!!