Uma's Essentials - A Sofa and a Sideboard

Everyone needs a few essentials in their life, a few landmarks in their personal geography and Uma's happen to be a sofa and a sideboard. Here's why :

"My sofa and sideboard have accompanied me over the years from city to city, attic to basement, veranda to lock-up storage unit. In these days of paint samples, fabric swatches and home improvement catalogues that weigh more than my back pack did when I went off for a month in Mongolia it can be quite liberating to pare the whole creation project down to a couple of basic possessions.

My 'sofa and sideboard' philosophy is based on the principle that, like most people, I have a lot of 'bits in between' in my life, that is all the untidy, recalcitrant stuff that can reside in a sideboard and then uncoil in your memory when you lie down for a bijou napette on the sofa.

I don't know what's in your sideboard collection but I'm willing to bet that, like mine, it looks like a jumble sale but feels like a treasure chest. Spread out on a table, accessories to a giant memory game, all these bits and pieces are a map of birth and death, triumph and failure, delight and disillusion. In short, all the stuff that's happened to make you, you and only you.

Over the years I've encountered many sideboard residents and their stories. Alongside the repeat offenders - love letters, divorce papers and children's paintings - I've counted bullets dug our of a house's walls and doors by a family returning after a war and tried to do the Charleston partnered by a 1920s chain mail evening bag which attended flapper balls in Paris and danced along the Seine's banks.

After a day doing battle I like to give my trusty sideboard a wink and a tap in passing and remember all the secrets we share, before collapsing on the sofa."