ENTER THE DRAGON. NO, LION

When you're delivering a yacht to a Chinese client ( ref my post last summer ), you have to do it properly. Hence Feadship whistling up a couple of lions in Rotterdam where they are rarely to be seen, far less filmed. Here, though, in best Attenborough style, is never-before-seen footage of them showing their lack of fear, even on a concrete pontoon and next to a 45m yacht. I think I saw Dick van Lent tremble slightly though.

There was a great dinner in the evening in the splendour of the Royal Rotterdam Sailing and Rowing Club which had a strict dress code meaning a rare appearance for a Bannenberg tie. The Owner's representative liked my tie so much ( purple and white by Richard James ) that I felt honour bound to take it off and give it to him with the result that I only narrowly avoided being asked to leave the premises. Enboldened by this concept of expressing a liking for something and reaping the rewards, I expressed a liking for a 45m Vantage but was met with a slightly glassy stare by Dick so I am not yet a member of the yacht owning ranks.

Blue Sky departs imminently for her new home in the Far East.

LADY PETRA VIDEO

We recently returned from the Monaco Show where Lady Petra was berthed, with Emperor Frans I of Oss receiving guests on board. We last saw him on the Friday evening, at the centre of a distinguished gathering on the Bridge Deck, tasting fine Cognac.

Some weeks previously, Lady Petra had been in Montenegro where Superyacht Media made this film :

http://bcove.me/xloexyog

Proving his all round versatility, Frans was also in attendance there and, by all accounts, spent some time in the Director's chair.

With thanks to the teams at Heesen Yachts and Superyacht Media

#TRENDING WITH MARTIN REDMAYNE

After failing to make the cut for the Bannenberg old boys love-in a few months ago, Martin Redmayne kindly offered me the olive branch of joining the bright young things team, along with Messrs Harrison, Hoekstra, Oeino and Pastrovich. Narrowing the topic for discussion to merely "The Future of Yacht Design", Martin gamely tried to get the gang to spot the trends for the future. To his undoubted chagrin, we collectively managed about one and a half suggestions between us, one of which was "bigger yachts".

The point being, trends are pretty hard to divine with the inherent individuality of a yacht owner. As someone smart in the audience observed, it's easier to spot these so-called trends by looking backwards a few years later, which all sounds a bit space-time continuum.

Undaunted, Martin flushed out a final prediction for the future out of all of us, the most pleasing of which was Stefano's hunch that all yachts will lose a deck, probably the "last" one.



So, I am not 100% certain if the audience felt suitably enlightened. It was a fun evening though. In contrast to the Bannenberg old boys, we did not swig Bollinger on stage as we pontificated about the yachting world, so there is the Future of Yacht Design. No Champagne.

As per my earlier post on the subject of colour, it was also clear that Mr Hoekstra has a fearless relationship with the colour purple. And maybe velvet too.

With thanks to Luke Sprague / Superyachtimages.com

COLOUR BY DAVID HICKS ( and brokers...)

I read a nice piece by India Hicks the other day in Finch's Quarterly about her father David ( incidentally a very good friend of my Dad ). She was writing about his bold use of colour and described what she called "his fearless relationship with pink, scarlet and orange". This photo of one of his rooms would seem to validate that. He also once drove his Land Rover through a field of daffodils as they were the wrong shade of yellow. This seems to us entirely admirable and we are currently looking for similar targets, though we are all too urban to own a Land Rover.* Correction. Mr Rowell does own a Land Rover Discovery but it has no traces of mud or crushed daffodil, merely Promemoria catalogues and books about obscure mid-century designers.

In fact, in our studio, there are a number of banned colours : at the top of the list is what Bannenberg Snr used to call Barclays Bank blue. I owe it as a matter of honour to him to continue this tonal fatwa. Mr Rowell also has a difficult relationship with members of the coral family and only consented to allow this shade on a couple of scatter cushions under some duress from a Client.

This made me think about the protracted, and often brutal, battles for the colour spectrum waged by various brokerage houses in recent years.Some years back Edmiston carried out a premptive strike for the colour red. Escalation soon followed when YCO annexed yellow and Burgess marched into turquoise which offered little resistance. Yacht Zoo grabbed black, C&N adopted a strategy of divide and rule by controlling two shades of blue. Ocean Independence mounted a long and demanding expedition to the furthest reaches of the colour spectrum and returned with shades new to the human eye.

TALITHA, THE JUBILEE AND HER FUNNELS

You have to hand it to the Captain and crew of Talitha when it comes to doing their bit for Jubilee spirit and all that. Eschewing the easy option of a bit of bunting or a poster, they settled for a discreet ( only about 2 metres across ) and tastefully desaturated Union flag painted on the top of the forward funnel, visible only to  passing birds and photographers in light aircraft ( thank you Shelley Barron ).

Talitha's funnels have an interesting history all of their own. During her rebuild at Devonport in the mid 1990s, Bannenberg Snr drew two funnels to replace the single original on Jezebel as she was previously.The dimensions of the aft one ( and therefore both ) were set by the Jodrell Bank-sized satellite dish which was the cutting edge in those days. The forward funnel hid ( and still does ) the main generator exhausts as well as the radar array, and Devonport had to construct the funnels with this radar transparency in mind.

So handsome were these funnels that Vogue commissioned a photo shoot by the renowned Koto Bolofo and here you can see a model dressed for everyday life on board, down to 7" heels and a ricepaper parasol.

Fast forward a few years and the funnels needed to be replaced, so the opportunity was taken to put them on a diet and a pair of slightly leaner ones were put in place, taking advantage of less massive satellite dish requirements. There was still room, however, for the Captain's bag of golf clubs. Or so I am told.

SEAL OF APPROVAL

OK. I know I said in an earlier post I wouldn't succumb to tabloid pun sub-editing.

Elandess, our ( well not exactly ours, but you know..) 60m Abeking delivered in 2009, is currently in the Galapagos, doing proper trans-ocean cruising. Here is a non-paying charter guest on the swim platform. Refreshingly, he made no demands on the crew for cocktails, sun cream or a towel. A simple fish was all that was needed.

Once we receive his full technical report, we shall pass the findings on to Abeking. Early indications suggest the aft steps were not sized correctly for flippers. And there was no ball to balance on his nose.

(AD)VANTAGE CHINA

We are really excited to be working with the team at Feadship to decorate the interior of their 45m Vantage ( Hull 805 ) for their new Client from China. The yacht has a "Miami" interior, originally developed by Sinot Yacht Design to which we are adding several layers in the broad spirit of American Deco. And a bit more besides.

Delivery in time for Chinese New Year 2013 - Year of The Snake, I believe.

NEPTUNES IN ISTANBUL

I managed not to title this Turkish Delight, or somesuch so I will never be hired as a Sun sub-editor.

We were very pleased to be part of the teams from Heesen and Abeking receiving Neptunes for Aurelia and Kaiser respectively : two more contrasting interiors would be hard to find.

Istanbul was a thrilling place to stage the awards. Stepping out of the Çırağan Palace to see Savarona anchored off on the restless waters of the Bosphorus was quite something. Talking of restless, Mr Rowell was a little disappointed not to see some whirling dervishes during our brief visit. Mr Fraser did spin around a bit after a number of mojitos, but it was not quite the same.

Our thanks go to our Owners, Heesen and Abeking and all the team involved in the projects. And to the WSA judges of course.

COFFEE HISTORY

Visitors to our Burnsall Street studio may well remember our Italian Faema 1950s coffee machine which sat brooding, and steaming in the studio like some demented Wurlitzer organ. It required a certain skill to operate it ( goggles and asbestos gloves would have been useful ) but once you learnt the right sequence of valves to open and shut and levers to pull, it made great coffee.

Rather like a British steam engine, it began to get ever more unreliable, occasionally suffering from some unspeakable water tank / milk cross-contamination, and it fell into disuse and a sad state of disrepair.

Late last year I thought it was time to sort this out as it was like seeing your favourite old Thomas the Tank Engine toy sitting sadly in pieces everytime we went into our store room. Resisting the temptation to call upon the expertise of a shipyard ( Lurssen would have quoted delivery in 2017; Henk de Vries would have kept it and added it to his collection of vintage machinery; Benetti would have split it between Livorno and Viareggio; Heesen would have turned it into a high-speed semi-displacement coffee machine; Abeking said a German machine would be better whilst Trinity didn't know what espresso was and suggested we drink sweet iced tea ), we found someone who can only be described as a professor of coffee. In Italy, natch.

Over the following months Enrico Maltoni took our box of valves, springs and washers and disappeared into his workshop from where, like a scene from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, there would be noises of grinding and welding and polishing.

Now it's ready ! We have to prepare the studio accordingly - plumb in a cold water feed, teach Caroline to be a Barista amongst her many other skills and then invite everyone round for coffee, just like the old days.



Absolutely no orders for skinny / dry / soya lattes accepted, but for everyone else our door is open. Just give us four hours warning so we can build up steam. 

AURELIA VIDEO

We thought it high time we entered the world of new-fangled moving pictures on our website. So, with the kind assistance of Heesen and Richard Gold Media, have a look at this short film of Aurelia :
http://www.youtube.com/embed/X5YldLNY0C0

PUSHING ELEPHANTS UPHILL

No really.

It's important to have a bit of variety from a design point of view, and good to get a pachyderm into the design language. So, as part of the finishing process of the lakeside house we have just completed in Geneva we had to position Mr Stripe ( above, er, centre ) in his rightful place on the terrace. Mr Fraser lent his weight from behind although Mr Rowell, in an unnecessarily vetinarary moment, thinks Allan was helping to deliver an elephant calf.

We are grateful to Elephant Family ( http://www.elephantfamily.org/ ) for their elephant procurement services and I'm sure any support for them would be gratefully received.

Mr Fraser has been off work this week with an implausible doctor's note.

GRUDGING PRAISE

This is, more or less, the view from YCO's office in Monaco. I have spared you the equivalent view from our studio windows but there is a bus stop with some graffiti, a branch of Dreams with beds on permanent 50% sale and a bloke shouting at no one in particular. I can live with this, just about.

YCO, however, have just upped the ante in a big way with their new website http://www.ycoyacht.com/ and this is annoying and admirable in equal measure. Annoying because I know just how much time it takes to beat things into shape, write decent copy and still emerge with something that people want to read. And admirable for much the same reasons and that it is following a fresh path. In fact, we sat around like kids for a while marvelling at the tour round their absurdly cute room with artfully placed models of cars, framed pictures of beautiful people and shells. Oh, and a drawing from Terry Disdale's studio. Clearly some sort of dream sequence.

And we don't accept, for one minute, the premise that there are YCO team members who relax by sailing, watching Chelsea FC and sliding pizzas into wood ovens. Obviously.

But, as types by our own admission who shout at anodyne websites, we think this is great. As Charlie Birkett realised, we don't really want the news of the "major price reduction" ( nor, I presume, does the guy who just bought the sistership ). We want strong images. Lots of them. And a feeling for who you are dealing with, and what they care about.

So well done you guys. We are off to populate our dream sequence room. We've got a saxophone, a cocker spaniel and a model Tiger Moth. That's a good start.

MOOSE

Here is the successor to wonderful Scooch. Moose Bannenberg.

He came from Somerset so is having to be reprogrammed to London life - don't chase the sheep; chase the pigeon. Or, better still, as you can see in this video, chase the box of 80 grm recycled copier paper.

He has a tough act to follow. We shall keep you posted. At this early stage I can only report that it is fortunate we have concrete floors in the office. And it is best not to wear cashmere.

LINLEY v2.1

Earlier this week, Mr Rowell and I had the far-from-onerous task of going to dinner at Linley in Pimlico Road to celebrate the new launch, look and direction for the company.

Never ones to do things by halves, David Linley and Jamie Edmiston had Tom Aikens prepare and ( as far as we could tell ) serve some of the dinner. As I eat a Pret a Manger sandwich at my desk today, marinated foie gras with pickled mushrooms and a sauterne jelly seems a distant memory.

The shop ( can I call it that ? ) has had a comprehensive and stylish makeover - see above - and we look forward to continuing our association with the team who, most recently, made us two sets of very smart chairs for the Owner's Library and Dining Saloon on Pacific.

SCOOCH

Saturday 15th October was the last day of a balmy Indian summer in London, before the weather turned and life became colder. A metaphor, somehow, for beloved Scooch who was gently put to sleep that day after succumbing to his recent illness, borne throughout with proper cocker spaniel levels of brio : his tail never ceasing to wag and walking with Susan until the day before.

There's no way to begin to say how much we miss him and the poignancy of his empty basket ( two in fact, for he naturally had one on each floor of the studio ) and his jar of Bonios is almost too much to bear. His ears were a design fault, of course. And he was the only dog in London who showed no interest in squirrels, cats or pigeons, preferring the dregs of a cup of semi-skimmed Latte.

In his office life, he saw oligarchs and Fedex guys, brokers and postmen. All were met by that black nose at the end of his dappled snout, his bright eyes and ever-beating tail. Scooch didn't do barking or biting, but was a skilled practitioner of hanging around nonchalantly while lunch was being made. He, along with me, Simon and Susan, made the journey from Burnsall Street to Wandsworth Bridge Road, snaffling every half-finished sandwich along the way.

Gentle beyond words.

Handsome beyond measure.

Loyal to his bones.

What a dog.

Scooch Bannenberg

2000 - 2011

FAKERS & FANTASISTS

Many years ago, my Dad had someone come into his Burnsall Street studio about a new yacht. After a slightly strange meeting, the guy made to leave, patted his jacket and, with great embarrassment said he must have mislaid his wallet and was there any chance we could help him get to Heathrow. My father gave him a crisp £ 50 note ( those were the days...), the man offered profuse apologies and thanks, and we never saw or heard from him again.

His spiritual successor is alive and well and appears to be putting shipyards and brokers through their paces around Europe. If you get a call from someone who has been looking for a 50 - 90m new build and claims to be closely related to a European industrial dynasty, treat it with suitable derision. Actually, there was a strong smell of rat when he first surfaced a couple of weeks ago, but it sounds like he may have convinced several yards to prepare for a bumper order.

Here is the Dickie Bannenberg faker detection guide ( not necessarily a complete list and I am sure others may have helpful contributions ) :

• Clients don't generally tend to go from 50m to over 90m in their requirements over the space of a couple of weeks




• Even the most loaded yacht owners are interested in sticking to a budget.




• Even the sharpest yacht owners don't tend to contact more than twenty yards in their preliminary discussions.




• A yahoo e mail address is unusual for a billionaire ( I might be wrong ).



• Talk of arriving by helicopter with two nannies and eight security men is a quick way to confirm you have no more than three pence to your name.




• If the only reference to the "client" on the Internet are endless identical pages involving the purchase a large diamond at Harry Winston, this is unlikely to help the cause.




• The Geneva Royal Family does not exist ( as far as I am aware ).




• One no-show at a meeting is confirmation enough. Two is gold-plated proof.




• Requiring a confidentiality agreement before you will reveal your name is, of course, bollocks.




• Getting Tim Heywood to do your exterior is mad. ( OK, I made that last one up )

In my patent system, any one of these triggers suggest trouble. When eight are triggered simultaneously it is time to bolt the door, get in supplies of drinking water and cut the phone lines.

THE HILLS ARE ALIVE ( with the sound of Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engines )

G-APSA is a 1958 DC-6, which, over the years, has flown the Atlantic run, played a part in the nascent British rocket development programme ( Blue Streak for those not immediately familiar with British rocket history ) and carried passengers and cargo from the deserts of the Gulf to San Francisco and the Maldives.

How often does a designer get the chance to be involved in the complete rebuild of an aircraft like this, including a brand new interior ? ( Never, of course ).

So, with great excitement, I joined the team from Cloudmaster to fly to Salzburg to look over one of the only airworthy examples owned by the inveterate aircraft collectors at Red Bull. The excitement was tempered by realising that this would break a lifelong personal rule of avoiding being piloted by your own client. Happily, Julian Firth of Cloudmaster is the owner of a safe pair of hands, hands which have held the yoke, or joystick, of anything from DC6's, to FlyBe jets and small single engine trainers .

The Cloudmaster DC-6 is resting in the UK after her fifty years service. She will be starting a new life after her restoration - mechanically immaculate; faithful in exterior appearance to her early years as a cornerstone of British aviation and with a Bannenberg & Rowell interior which will eschew the language of the business jet and instead explore themes and influences from her long and distinguised past, without straying into retro pastiche.

The studio is already awash in DC-6 research material - manuals, rather niche-interest books and checklists ( eg Cabin supercharger start marker - Destination Altitude ). It's going to be a fascinating journey.

www.cloudmaster.aero

FOOTBALL SCANDAL - Live updates

My post has uncovered a web of deceit and, dare I say, corruption. Although no phone hacking at this stage.

16.20 Benetti admit that their senior project managers and architects regularly play 'Biliardino' as they call it.

16.25 It is revealed that Bonzini executives ( manfacturers of table football ) are regular guests at Benetti events.

16.30 Vincenzo Poerio was repeatedly warned not to hire Davide Sorgo due to his background of hanging around in bars.

16.35 Calls for resignations.........

THE ROTTEN STATE OF FOOTBALL

These are dark days for football. Precious Englishmen managed by an Italian who started well, but then has seen his star gradually fade. So it was with some confidence that we took on Davide Sorgo and Gaia Meucci of Benetti at our trusty table football ( followers of our blog will recall that this was the table at which de Vries met their doom, emerging on the wrong side of a 10 nil scoreline ). Admittedly the table has been in storage for a while, pending the sorting out of some new space at our office, but we were confident the old Bannenberg & Rowell magic would return ; a natural understanding between Bannenberg at the back and goal-hanger Rowell up front. Plus, it was almost certain that the Benetti Azzurri would be more interested in their appearance or resort to hystrionics when the going got tough. Well, I have to report that Benetti won ( I can't bring myself to use the word triumphed ) 10-3. One goal was clearly unfair, Gaia spinning her line of forwards viciously. But there was far too much natural expertise on show and I have had no option but to write to Vincenzo Poerio to plant the seed of doubt as to where his project managers spend their time when they claim to be "on board".

FROM FLASH TO TORCH....

In the shadow of the Bibendum in Brompton Cross once nestled a bar called The Crescent.

Run by, amongst others, Paul Medhurst (a friend, and now purveyor of the chicest hampers known to man, at whiskhampers.co.uk) and stewarded through thick and thin by Norman Ellard, it was the best kept secret in South Kensington. Before my wife was my wife we would regularly rendezvous here on any evening remotely near a weekend (5 out of the 7 evenings available). These were gentler times, when the hedge funds were mere cuttings and The Beach was nowhere near The Fulham Road, and one could easily find oneself jostling with Madonna and Guy Richie as they sought a discreet nightcap in this sliver of modernity on the sedate Chelsea-Knightsbridge borders.

I think I’m right in saying that The Crescent was one of the earliest projects by a young design duo then known as BOA. They were already a perfect fit for that Wallpaper generation of newly nourished design-savvy Brits and, as if to re-kindle an enduring romance, quickly went on to design for Vitra, Cappelini and others, in that familiarly symbiotic marriage of British design and Italian ‘make-happen’. BOA soon became Barber Osgerby and I later found out that the aforementioned Mr Medhust had studied with Jay Osgerby. An early break for BOA and a canny call by Mr Medhust.

Fast forward about 15 years: it is with only the faintest shot of envy and with a magnum of pride that I read about Barber Osgerby’s most recent project: The Olympic Torch. The design duo has managed to effortlessly blend the cheesiest of Olympic symbolism with 21st century geometry, raw practicality, and sinuous structure to create a truly potent contemporary symbol of the London 2012 Games.

As some of our more outspoken design luminaries begrudgingly exit the stage there are thankfully a few pretenders. Designers like Barber Osgerby and Thomas Heatherwick have quietly proven themselves as world class purveyors of progressive British inventiveness, apparently unencumbered by the bluster that used to accompany any emerging British design talent.
Thank goodness the powers somewhere (and not just Mr Medhust) have seen the light…

image: www.barberosgerby.com
chicest hampers known to man: www.whiskhampers.co.uk