Amelia’s Magazine | Book Review: SuperMarket Sarah Wonder Walls by Sarah Bagner

Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Sarah Bagner has come up with a killer idea: walls as showcase, as vertical space where things are not just stacked inconsiderately but placed with love to admire. Since 2009 this former advertising creative has been fetishising the humble wall on her Supermarket Sarah website. On the website she puts together colourful displays as a way to sell stuff in a visually appealing way: it’s a model that has led to many fun collaborations with a host of top brands, including Selfridges, Rob Ryan and Tatty Devine (read our review of the latter launch party here).

Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Now Sarah Bagner has written a book, aptly titled Wonder Walls. But the book, it turns out, is about so much more than walls. In it she meets eclectic home owners who’ve got an eye for arresting displays: and without a product to sell it’s the personal clutter of a full creative life that has become king… on shelves, in cabinets, hanging from the ceiling, laid out in ornamental table displays. I love an amazing arrangement of lampshades and chandeliers that dangle over a simple wooden kitchen table in Christopher Kelly‘s abode.

Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
What binds the book together is Sarah’s unique voice: her choice of subjects are unashamed maximalists, as witnessed in the extremely packed shelves of librarian Ilse Runow Raihle (which probably best reflects my own magpie like approach to interior *ahem* design.) The book actually visits just a few creative types who live with their stuff out in the open.. and there is so much of it that you’re still touring the same house a dozen pages later. As a design aesthetic this book is inspiration to all of us who fail to live up to our inner minimalist ideals. Yes, it says, embrace the accumulated clutter and the strange collections… let it all hang out and damn the dust.

Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
Supermarket Sarah Wonder walls book review
SuperMarket Sarah Wonder Walls by Sarah Bagner is available from Amazon and all good bookshops.

Visit Sarah Bagner‘s Supermarket Sarah website to find lots of unique items to buy, especially in the run up to Christmas. I particularly like bright tea towels and printed cushions by Jonna Saarinen (who I spotted at last year’s RCA graduate show). The site is a good place to find exotic one offs, for example props by Lord Whitney, and of course our very own Maria Papadimitriou hosts a wall where you can buy her unique Plastic Seconds upcycled jewellery.

Categories ,Book Review, ,Christopher Kelly, ,Cico Books, ,Ilse Runow Raihle, ,Jonna Saarinen, ,Lord Whitney, ,Maria Papadimitriou, ,Plastic Seconds, ,rob ryan, ,Sarah Bagner, ,Selfridges, ,Supermarket Sarah, ,Tatty Devine, ,Wonder Walls, ,Wonderwalls

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