Harvest

There had to be a good reason for being at Preston Flea Market one freezing afternoon last year and perhaps this little Poole plate was it. Titled Summer II, its harvest theme is right on the cusp of autumn. The effect of the scene is a contrast I enjoy in real life too, when everything’s struck bright with sunlight against the gloom.

• Summer II, 6” plate by Barbara Fürstenhöfer for Poole, 1980

New Site

I realise Paul Riley hasn’t devised a way of getting fresh water to remote African villages, but he’s still a hero. From a few scrappy files, hundreds of images and garbled suggestions riddled with bad terminology, he fashioned our wonderful new website.

That’s not to say there wasn’t a little grumbling about the workload vs. the miniscule timeframe and budget. Look at it this way Paul, at least I kept you from skulking off to the skate park every five minutes; broken bones heal slowly at our age!

Ambit

If I had more lives to live I’d begin another blog, an inventory of scraps found marking the pages in used books. So far I have tickets (old, new, foreign and familiar); photographs; curious confectionery wrappers; shopping lists and two full letters!



This A4 invite to Ambit’s 1985 Art Show was a good find. From the pages of a Louis MacNeice poetry collection, it’s not so much a colour copy as an ancient Xerox with coloured toner.



Aside from citations in arts articles, my knowledge of Ambit’s output is fairly limited; the current show upstairs at east London’s Raven Row has helped fill the gaps. As ever, and much to my chagrin, Paolozzi’s work from The Jet Age Compendium makes screen printing seem a vehicle of boundless possibilities.

Hallo Haru!

Occasionally visitors will break monotony at the studio, one-off meetings or regulars for tea and sympathy. Especially welcome recently were Ayako (from Japanese agent Tiny Crown) and her wonderful son, Haruniwa. Spotting all the potential perils in the studio takes a keen eye, but there’s never been such happy distraction from work!


Next time perhaps I’ll bring my camera too, that way you’ll see far more of them and a bit less of us.

Picture Book

• Straight Lines, Parallel Lines, Perpendicular Lines, Mannis Charosh (illus. Enrico Arno), Black, 1970

Summer Interlude

Minus the tragedy, my annual dream of summer... maybe next year.

• Summer Interlude, 1951 (Images, Ingmar Bergman, Bloomsbury, 1994).

Tea Towels

I swear we need some worker elves; it seems like months since we decided to adapt two print designs for fairtrade organic tea towels. Of course it was a breeze out-sourcing the printing, but just as we’re through with quality control, packaging and branding, everyone’s off on their summer hols!

Ephemera

I’m not sure why ‘ephemera’ (the grouping for flies that hatch and die within a day) has come to describe so well those unclassified scraps of paper that narrowly avoid the bin. Cycling by London’s old New Piccadilly Cafe, clad now in diagonal batons of fly-poster proofing, I’m pleased I kept their card.

New Space

Finally finished the month-long move into a studio on the other side of town. The new space comes with no fewer than ten keys… directly symbolic of the minutes it now takes to unlock each door.


My trusty old print bench proved just too big to budge, but now the new one’s up and in I think it maybe growing on me a little; clunky as a piece of De Stijl design and red as the Ettore Sottsass Valentine typewriter.

Cloud Project

I’m sure Show 2 at the RCA will be remembered by many as the place they’d been when this week’s shocking news broke. My graduating friend, Zoe Papadopoulou, hadn’t been in touch for a while and when I saw how busy she’d been pimping this ice cream van, I completely understood why.



Emulating cloud activity and nanotechnology, she sort of served up the essence of extracted flavours without the substance. The project was intended to highlight current nano-scale experimentation that aims to influence the biosphere as a whole, especially the release of CO2. All this and nice graphics too!


I’m guilty of not having seen the rest of the show, though my partner spent ages seeking out new design innovations… if some men love bicycles and radios so dearly, how come they crave seeing them constantly reinvented?

Artist's Rides

• Francis Picabia, 1940
• Yvonne Rainer, 1950

Table

Seeing another article on Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama yesterday reminded me of a recent dinner with old pal, Virgene Valout… so many intriguing objects in her home (including Bingo the cat) it would’ve been rude to start photographing them all, so I settled for this spotty table.

Open Studio

Though next weekend sees another Open Studio event at GWS, it’ll be the last at the present site. The Lost Goods Building will soon be making way for London’s utterly superfluous Crossrail project. Many of the artists, designers and makers will be relocating just a few meters up the road, but I still reckon they’ll be hell-bent on selling everything super-cheap.


I’ll be doing my usual frantic bazaar of discontinued styles and slight seconds at 50p, maybe some drawings and tentatively testing out a couple of ceramic bits too. It’s taken a while for me to work out a molding method that gives me acceptably consistent but unique results.




Open Studios
June 6th & 7th 12-6pm
Great Western Studios
The Lost Goods Building
Great Western Road
London W9 3NY

Shutting Shops

I’ve been away for a while and trying to avoid crashing back to everyday life with a bump, I took a more meandering route to the studio only to see one of my favourite junk shops gutted with the shutters down. Run by a couple of slightly camp geezer-types with bifocals on elegant chains and pyramids of dog-ends in the ashtray, they had a tattered but extensive dictionary of artists and if someone’s name was in it, prices would soar.Mostly I treated it as a mini-museum, I’d had a handful of interesting things over the years (like this gloomy Moya Cozens print) but to think of the curios I’d earmarked selling at everything-must-go prices in my absence just makes me shudder. Still, as one-door closes another opens, quite literally; there’s a lovely new bike shop a few doors down.

Bob & Blossom

Bob & Blossom have a straightforward, positive approach to development, production and promotion. Adapting designs for a range of their quality children’s t-shirts was effortless and enjoyable… I hope it shows.

Early Years

Releasing new products in a shrinking market is hardly sound business acumen, if I was ever in this for the money though, I’d be sorely disheartened by now. I’d wanted to produce childrens' birthday designs for a while, but couldn’t reconcile myself to the idea of hand-printing multiple variants. Glad I finally came round to it... the results (Birthday Bus and Bertha) are quite sweet.

Easter

• Bel Cowie, Easter Egg, screen print, 1979

I stumbled across this scrappy print in a tub of the usual discarded posters of footballers and dolphins. A stock study I’m sure I once would’ve hated, I now find myself drawn to its earthy domesticity. True, most of the seven colours are drab variations of 70s tobacco but the flat areas of pattern and the dubious dual perspective lend the print a quiet audacity. Maybe someday I'll even frame it.

Overlapping Colour

• Un-attributed /dated textile, Charleston Farm House
  
• Kenneth Farnhill, Collins, 1962
  
• Poster, Lacome, 1964
  

Spring!

As spring becomes more promising with each passing day, my seasonal mug for Melt and their Selfridges concession should be available any moment. Here’s one of the rejected designs… which may or may not have been my favourite.

Tiles #2

Some items seem somehow different as soon as you learn a little about the processes behind them. Here are some of the tiles that lay/hang around my home in varying degrees of decoration/uselessness. The second one is like the world’s toughest cheese on toast.

With news that the recession will see fewer donations and greater custom at charity shops, I doubt this collection will ever swell to Sheila Hughes proportions.

• Lisa Larson for Gustavsberg, Sweden
  
• Cemar, Italy
  
• US Plastics, Sweden
  
• Pilkington, England
  
• Unmarked