Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting the two lovely ladies behind a new and very gorgeous online publication, The quintessential Magazine.
Leanne Carter-Taylor is the woman behind quintessential duckeggBLUE, the shop packed with gorgeous found industrial and antique furniture and objects in Sydney’s Balmain. Tracy Lines is ex creative director of Inside Out magazine and lifestyle publisher at Murdoch Books. When you meet them and feel their wonderful enthusiasm for this project, you quickly realise why the magazine is as impressive as it is. Because it isn’t just another online magazine, or a well disguised catalogue, it is much more that. Its functionality, although web-based, is much more like an app, and feels like one on iPad. And it is full of quality content (written by people like Inside Out founding editor Karen McCartney) and beautiful photos by Dan Himbrechts (styled by John Mangila), unbelieveably, all shot in the store (or the garage). It’s amazing it has all come together since August.
Leanne is a self-confessed furniture nerd and makes no apologies for it. She travels the world four times a year, sourcing the covetable finds her shop is full of. Each piece carries a handwritten label with an astonishing amount of information about its history, story and where she discovered it. She has a photographic memory for the finer details of everything she collects but when it comes to the everyday stuff, not so much! The daughter of a furniture maker, she grew up in England being taught to respect furniture and never to sit on the arms of the lounge. Her love for old, pre-loved things and their unique history is seriously infectious.