Gorgeousness on an ‘industrial scale’

Someone at a recent event in Suffolk said to me, “I knew you could do flowers like this but I didn’t know you could do them on an industrial scale.” Neither did I really, but it turns out I can….

Seven venues in Aldeburgh and Snape Maltings were taken over for three days of really interesting programming – talks, discussions, films, parties – for Editorial Intelligence’s Names Not Numbers 2014 styled and decorated by Byrd & Spry.

Inspired by the coastal location in Aldeburgh and the flat river landscape of Snape Maltings, I put together a ‘Coastal Cabinets of Curiosity’ scheme that unified seven very different venues in a light natural palate. The event was all about ideas and I wanted to add another layer of visual stimulation with interesting textures and collections of coastal and botanical objects.

We also had a graphic element in the form of three giant (and heavy) letter Ns representing the event’s moniker. Love a bit of lettering… We used these for the group photo on the beach and made the Ns the central feature of the huge Britten Studio at Snape Maltings. Cardboard Ns were incorporated into the still life arrangements used to decorate the venues and parties.

The logistics and planning were complicated but I did have the pleasure of writing the bizarre Post-it: Bell jar = dog’s head. All in a day’s work….

We had the run of furniture from Made.com for the four stages (after all the online research, the internet is convinced I want to buy the Made.com Bouji chair which pops up in adverts everywhere I go now. May yet get one…)

I also had an awesome 20ft photo made for one of the stages and made 30m of table runners (see below, in production….)

But it all looked great with the illustrious bums in seats.

All the speakers took home a little Byrd & Spry posey. My lovely over-qualified assistant Marianne was in charge of making sure we had the right number of speaker gifts in each venue each day (seriously, not as easy as it sounds…) and we got pretty good at carrying the buggers…. A really big thanks to her and to the talented Rachel Grimes who helped make 110 poseys the night before we set off.