Mrs Bennet

It’s been a long wait but our brilliant Bobbin table lamps will soon be back in stock in all colours. Yes, even the Cornick Blue and Spillyweake Green!

Shop in store or online.

I’m often asked how I source the one off vintage fabrics we use to make Mrs Bennet’s circular stools. The answer is from here, there and everywhere. A mixture of auctions, antiques fairs and through my contacts with the fabric houses themselves.

But sometimes, just sometimes, the story is a little more personal. As is the case with the Hykenham fabric used on the first pair of stools shown.

Many of you will have seen this fabric in the shop - it adorns my Mrs Bennet chair and covers the table at the front of the store. This fabric means a lot to me because, for much of my childhood, this exact fabric (and I do mean this very fabric) hung as curtains in the living room of my family home. When my mother downsized, I couldn’t let it be discarded! So I unpicked the curtains, cut out the fabric and saved it until I finally found a new purpose for it in Mrs Bennet. Fabric that is forty years old still looks as beautiful as the day it was first hung!

So are the stools I’m selling to you covered in old curtains, I hear you ask? The answer is no. But when I came across a 3m never-used-and-perfectly-preserved piece of it in a small fabric shop in York last summer I had to buy it.

And now you can own a little bit of history too. These stools truly are one offs (well two offs - given there are a pair of each).

DM for price and details.

I’ve loved everything about this project - working with one of my favourite customers, working with this gorgeous fabric, working on an Uncle Richard Ottoman (such a gentleman of a design).

We tweaked the measurements of this one to fit perfectly in a bijou but beautiful space. Get in touch if you’re inspired to customise your own bespoke Ames Bennet ottoman. We have limited workshop space between now and Easter.

I know this is belated, but if I’m honest I had been feeling a whole lot of doom and gloom about 2026. The world seems to be in such a precarious place that the usual optimism with which I might welcome in a new year, had gone awol. My usual joie de vivre distinctly lacking.

But then this morning, the sunlight coming through the windows threw dancing shapes on the cabinet and floor, and lit up the neighbour’s hedge so that the top leaves glowed sunset pink. The breeze, as I sit with my cup of tea in the garden, plays across my skin. And the birds don’t know the world is going to hell in a handcart. They are singing regardless.

And so with the world once again reminding me of its beauty, ai have decided, in whatever small way I can, to be cheerful. And there’s a lot coming up for Mrs Bennet in 2026 to feel positive about - new product lines (including a fabulously smart new rechargeable table lamp and some gorgeous English handmade ceramics), more ‘design-with-you’ projects (where professional relationships inevitably end up as friendships), and more community building through collaborations with other wonderful small businesses both in Singapore and abroad, and Mrs Bennet’s programme of events (keep an eye on our socials for details). It’s time therefore to be just a little more Mrs Bennet. I may not be able to change the whole world, but the mission to bring just a little more colour and joy to that part of it Mrs Bennet touches continues.

So here’s to 2026, my friends. Let’s do the best we can for it and for each other x

#ɴᴇᴡʏᴇᴀʀ2026

We are back home in Yorkshire this Christmas, which means it’s a holiday packed full of visiting friends and family dotted around the County. Call me biased, but this truly is the most beautiful and wild landscape, especially in winter when the moors retain purple heather and the bracken shows a million different browns. Very Heathcliffe!

Anyhow, when not visiting or out for bracing walks in the cold, its feet up in front of the fire (where I am right now, typing this), copious Christmas food (yes I’m stuffed, yes I can manage another), nostalgic TV (can’t do a Christmas without Eric and Ernie) and mildly (ok, very) competitive board gaming.

I hope wherever you are and whatever your Christmas looks like, it is filled with as much comfort and joy.

Lucy-Ann x