Issue 07

Corbridge, a Roman village set along a portion of Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland, may seem an unlikely spot for an eclectic design shop like RE. After spending years working in the fashion industry, owners Jenny Vaughan and Simon Young opened RE in 2003 in a small converted workshop in a village far from the bustle of London, but closer to home.

RE is a showcase for a wide scope of unique merchandise, as well as Jenny and Simon’s multitude of skills in design, planning, styling and building collections. “There’s no set formula or logic to the style of RE,” says Jenny. “It’s purely about things we like mixed together: old, new, reworked, mass-produced or handcrafted one-offs.” Despite being five hours northeast of London, RE has found its way to the city in the form of pop-up shops and a permanent concession in the venerable department store Liberty of London.

Background:  Hadrian’s Wall is a nod to the power and vastness of the Roman Empire. It stretches 80 miles from the Solway Coast in the west to Tynemouth in the east, and it took 15,000 men six years to build. The Wall, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the best known and preserved frontier of the empire.

INTERVIEW: Simon Young, Jenny Vaughan, Owners, Re {Corbridge}

01 When you give items a new lease on life, what inspires your designs?

It depends on the item – sometimes we are inspired by an old piece from a flea market that we can find lots of – for example the macabre plates we saw lots of plates and started collecting them then came up with the idea of re-decorating them we then had to find someone who could make the transfers to our designs and someone who was prepared to re-fire the old plates with the new motifs.

Inspiration – To be individual and unique, film, books, flea markets, exhibitions, collecting, skills and crafts – looking & watching all the time!

02 Why did you choose to get into tableware and home accessories? 

We’d had a lifetime in fashion and wanted to work in a different field but that still utilized our skills – design, planning and building collections and ranges, editing, styling, colour and pattern

03 What type of recycled items do you typically work with?  

All sorts – textiles, ceramics, furniture, metalwork, wire work, literally anything!

04 What is next for your company?

We are currently designing more exclusive products for the RE@liberty collection and who knows maybe a book?

05 Whose work do you admire when it comes to recycled/salvaged/upcycled design work around the globe?

We love the true crafts people who creatively recycle (often out of necessity) in the third world

06 Do you ship internationally?

Yes we have a lot of overseas customers and we also do an exclusive collection for Liberty at their Regent Street store in London

07 Do you entertain at home? 

SY – Not as much as I’d like, as we work six days a week!  Luckily my wife, Vicky, likes cooking particularly vegetarian recipes (although we are both meat eaters) Favourites include Mollie Katzen and Yotem Ottolenghi but we both love presentation and have lots of different crockery, cutlery and decorative objects to suit every theme or occasion!

08 Are there any unique/special cultural traditions related to inviting family or friends to your house that you can share with us?

SY – we often do Sunday brunches – bucks fizz or mimosas and Vicky makes great breakfast boxes – toasted bread boxes filled with a complete miniature breakfast – chipolata sausages, mini roasted vine tomatoes, bacon, mini fried quails eggs or scrambled eggs from our own hens and button mushrooms – delicious and really eye catching.

At Halloween we had lamb shank pies with paprika in individual gold dishes with the bone of the lamb shank sticking through the pie crust – ghoulish but very tasty!