Sunday Times Home - Plum lines
Juicy purples and indulgent mauves
are just the thing to bring a touch of
mellow fruitfulness to your home
How did your fruit trees do this year? Mine astonished me. After years of indolence, they pulled their socks up — branches bent with fat fruit. I've just stashed a dozen jars of Victoria plum preserve and two XXL Kilner jars of damson gin in the kitchen cupboard.
Autumn is, for me, the high point of the interiors calendar. I adore the berry shades that flood the stores, making them resemble larders reassuringly full of conserved summer fruits. Each year, when designers rediscover this classic strawberry-to-blackcurrant palette, they add a fresh twist. And, this time around there are two ways to serve your berries: dark and delicious, sparkling with glossy black, distressed silver and mirrored glass accessories; or with pistachio greens, chartreuses, teals or neutrals cutting through the richness.
The colours may be rich, but investing in a few key pieces to introduce autumn warmth to your decoration needn't constitute overindulgence. The brilliant thing about berries is that they are so perennially popular, the big chains — M&S, Homebase, B&Q — offer practical and pretty homewares in these shades.
Hand-knotted Anemone Cacoa rugby Marni, £ 2,810; therugcompany.info
On the floor, the iconic berry-colour design of AW09 is Tom Dixon's Step rug, launched last month at the London Design Festival. In hand-knotted Tibetan wool, it's a bold geometric graphic in sloe, plum and strawberry on a black background — inspired, he says, by the television test card (274cm x 183cm, £3600; 020 7229 5148, therugcompany.info).
