Friday, December 03, 2010

London Glassworks Open Weekend

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The fabulous London Glassworks are holding an open weekend from tomorrow so if you like glass, if you like handmade, and you like a bargain, make sure you check it out! This place is a little gem so I'm planning on getting down there and treating myself to something that looks nothing like my own wobbly efforts, and perhaps some lovely things for Christmas presents too if my budget will allow!

You can find them here, on an industrial estate near Black Horse Road station (Victoria Line & Overground).


Aubergine Coloured Glass Dish

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Thursday, November 11, 2010

High Society

Prohibition

There's some lovely print to see, from fascinating little bottles of potions to somewhat modernist, positively Burrill-esque simplicity in the new High Society exhibition at the Wellcome Collection, if this Guardian gallery is anything to go by. It opens today and is on til the end of February.

Bayer-Heroin-and-Prohibition

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Letterpress Calendar


Check out this lovely typographic calendar from fabienbarral. Love the typeface and colours. I don't think it's available to buy yet but check letterpress-calendar.com for updates.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Pier Neon

CHANGE

Lovely type turns up in the most unexpected places sometimes. These were all in the arcade at the bottom of Southwold Pier. The Pier has the infamous Under The Pier Show which is brilliant, but possibly means the lovely neon in the arcade gets even more overlooked than it would anyway. Looking at the photos now, feeling somewhat detached from their context, the decisively glowing phrases seem to take on an altogether more existential meaning.

Change script

TRY YOUR LUCK

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Genius Debossing


DolcePress 2010 Holiday Cards, originally uploaded by dolcepress.


Spotted this fab card on Flickr today - that snow-angel deboss is brilliant. I wish I'd thought of it!

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Bookshopping

Bookshopping2

I found these fantastic book covers in a second hand bookshop in Lichfield - there were so many, but I think these were the choice picks. Lucky for me, Penguin Plays seem to be pretty unpopular in Lichfield.

Bookshopping1

Thursday, August 26, 2010

My Shared Items

Hi! Things have been a little quiet here recently, but no matter how busy I am I'm always reading, and sharing. You can see a stream of all of the things I think are interesting/lovely/funny/beautiful over in my Google Reader Shared Items. If you like the kind of things I post here, you might find those interesting too!

Among other things shared recently are Josef Schulz's stunning photography;

by Josef Schulz



Daniel Freytag's gorgeous typography for Frey & Ford;

by Daniel Freytag



and Peter Slight's beautiful shadow boxes;

by Peter Slight

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Blackberry, Blackcurrant & Cherry Gin.

Gin-1


Make your own very delicious gin in a few easy steps.
It makes your kitchen smell brilliant too.


Gin-2

Gin-3

Gin-4


You might find, if your sieve is as rubbish as mine, that you need to strain it twice. After straining mine the second time, I also added a bit more gin - once it's cold you can just add to taste. A very yummy taste.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I Absolutely Must Have...

BackByAnneSophieBack-1

...this dress, from Anne Sophie Back. I love the hood, the sleeves, the material, the length, the photo....

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Glassblowing

I was lucky enough to have a glassblowing lesson a few weeks ago and it was absolutely fantastic! I work for a creative company and we work with glass as a medium, but we are used to working with entirely different processes to the traditional hot glass techniques. It was such an exciting experience, I thoroughly recommend it - and if you find glass fascinating as a material anyway, it's pretty much a must! We went to London Glassblowing Courses based in Walthamstow, North London. Incredibly in one day (a fairly hot day, it has to be said!) we each came home with four complete pieces we'd made ourselves.

The first thing they get you to do is really more about convincing yourself not to run away from the furnace immediately (which your brain is insisting is what you really should be doing) and actually concentrate on moving an iron rod in through the little door of fear and gathering some molten glass from the huge ceramic pot-full inside, carrying it out and across the room, not dropping it on the floor, not touching it, and using your hand (with only damp newspaper to protect it) and a tool to shape it. The result is what they kindly term a 'snowman'. It could also be called a wobbly blob, a thingy, a doorless doorhandle, or a nipply thing, depending on how your mind works I guess.

Snowman Blob

Next you progress to a traditional spherical paperweight, decorated with air bubbles and delicate floating petals of coloured glass inside. At this point, this looks like the pinnacle of glass design and utterly mystifying in it's production. They guided us through it really well though, starting with gathering some glass as you do for the snowman, then gathering another layer to build up the quantity. You then round the shape off again, before one of the instructors helps you add a soft, molten stringy bit of coloured glass onto either side, flattening it down to a blob. Then you do the fun bit - squishing a sharp tool into the centre of the coloured blob, now soft and maleable with a bit of resistance, like caramel. This makes the decorative petal shape and creates a space to trap the air bubbles when you then gather the last layer of glass, round that off and finish the piece.

Paperweight

In the afternoon, the glassblowing begins. Task one is a tumbler or drinking glass. I will never look at one the same way: this is a real challenge. Just look at the mess I made;

Tumbler

This time you need to get your skates on. Take too long getting between the furnace and your seat and the glass will be too hard to blow (sorry, couldn't think of any other way to say that...) But go too quick and your blob of glass goes all lopsided and you really can't blow a bubble into it until it's nice and balanced and shaped nicely - otherwise the finished piece will be thin on one side and all chunky on the other

Gather of molten glass

Although, describing the process as 'blowing a bubble' doesn't quite do it justice - think Pob-esque faces and ears popping. So now you have your glass, you've coaxed a bubble into it - first by re-heating the glass in the glory hole (yes it's really called that) and coaxing one-breath's worth of air into expanding for you, followed by more re-heating and more Pob-facing. Once you've got a decent-sized bubble, you shape it into a nicely spherical shape...

Shaping

Lovely. Now, add another iron rod on the opposite end, and break the glass off the blowing rod. (Yes! "Break it off"! I know!!) I don't seem to have a photo of that bit - perhaps because it felt particularly nail-biting and I couldn't take my eyes off it every single time. So now you have your bubble attached to a rod, with one open end from where you broke it apart from the blowing rod. This is re-heated and you shape your tumbler into an elegant and delicate shape (*hahahahaha*)

Corinne's drinking glass starting to take shape

Corinne's actually looked great. Like a glass a normal person might even buy. Mine is the tumbler only a mother could love. It even has a half-resealed crack up one side, where I broke it away from the blowing rod a little too enthusiastically.

And finally, the pièce de résistance - a glass dish (some beautiful examples of which - like these by ,Stewart Hearn - we had been admiring in their small gallery upstairs). We stuck to one colour - which was complicated enough to add, so they did that bit for us; I think the really saturated coloured glass rods that are divided up to add to the clear in small quantities are particularly expensive. It started off much like the tumbler, except bigger of course, and with an exciting addition of a glass foot, for which you need a few pairs of eyes;

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BUT! One of THE most exciting parts of the day, I have to say, was the amazing way the dish took shape. From when you get to the stage of what is essentially a big wobbly tumbler on a stick, you then take the whole thing and stick it back into the glory hole. Utterly insane. I know. But THEN!!!! It goes a bit soft and saggy. You can see it melting, and when it almost falls in on itself.... you SPIN!

glowing2

...(and then you make sure you can still get it out through the hole) and then you SPIN SPIN SPIN LOADS MORE! It really is that exciting!!!!

Finished dish

And if you wanted a dish with scalloped edges, at this point you just turn the whole thing down towards the floor, and there you go, gravity is your friend.

I kind of like the jaunty asymetric quality mine has...

Aubergine Coloured Glass Dish


You can contact the guys we did it with at glassblowingcourses.co.uk.

Friday, August 06, 2010

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Friday, July 02, 2010

Infinity Symbol by Veronica Salazar


Infinity Symbol, originally uploaded by Book Of Art.

Beautiful sculptures made out of books. She seems to favour typography but this infinity symbol says so much. Amazing!

(spotted at Rag & Bone)

Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Playful Type

Uniqlo/Gestalten-1

Uniqlo/Gestalten-2

Uniqlo/Gestalten-3

Well, I was planning on writing a post telling you all how great these Uniqlo Playful Type tees are. But then I realised all the ones I bought 2 days ago at full price are now in the sale. So I don't think I want to tell you how great they are anymore. I want to sulk.

Whoever heard of Gestalten anyways.

Friday, May 28, 2010

January to March 2010


January to March 2010, originally uploaded by wil_freeborn.


Great work from Wil Freeborn - take a look at the detail and colour full size. Well worth a look through the rest of his Flickr stream.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Natsko Seki

Public Bath by Natsko Seki
Public Bath, 250 x 250mm, 2008

I went to see the Pick Me Up show at Somerset House yesterday and was really overwhelmed by the amount of great work on show. One artist that really did stand out to me that I'd never seen before was Natsko Seki. Her work is amazingly detailed (which is difficult to get across here) and really fascinating. It's joyful and happy but also quite subtle, and the range of techniques she uses in the pieces she showed seemed to blend together seamlessly, and gave an energetic feeling of depth. Really beautiful stuff. I wish I could of afforded one of her larger pieces, but I did manage to pick up an (unlimited edition I think) print of the gorgeous 'Kite' from the shop for a meagre £20.

It was amazing to see Rob Ryan in action, carefully and determinedly drawing away with an automatic pencil, while one of his glamorous assistants sat cutting away with a scalpel. The room was packed and actually kind of claustrophobic. I would of loved to talk to him, but he was so engrossed I didn't want to disturb him. Also, what am I going to say?! "Hi I'm a huge fan. it's really great for me to be able to meet you. And I'm definitely more important than the other 100 megafans also in here. I can't afford to buy any of your work though." YAWN.

Friday, March 26, 2010

The Belousov Zhabotinsky reaction



I saw this on a really interesting BBC4 program last night called The Secret Life of Chaos and just had to share it, it's so beautiful! Almost magical. It's the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction.

It led to a whole section of beautiful images brought about by feedback loops Definitely worth a watch!

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Monday, March 15, 2010

Cabin + Cub

Cabin + Cub, Constant Bird Talk giclee print

Spotted this on the Etsy front page today and loved it straight away! There's something about the slightly angled cut-out and rich swirls that contrast really nicely. A giclee print of an original collage, you can snap up Constant Bird Talk for only $15, from a limited edition of 100 prints.

See more sweet things at the Cabin + Cub Etsy shop and read more about Valerie, her work and her inspirations at the Cabin + Cub blog.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Beth Pohlman's Jewellery

Beth Pohlman silver jewellery pyramid necklace

I discovered Beth Pohlman's jewellery recently, absolutely gorgeous pieces. She does a fantastic range of modern organic designs, but the ones that particularly stood out to me were these 'Pyramid' styles and the 'Sphere' necklace. I love the geometric structural quality, contrasted with the handmade silver construction. Beautiful things! If anyone would like to buy me one from her Etsy shop I'd be really grateful. Thanks.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Drypoints, from Minu


My Jumper, originally uploaded by sissT.


This new series of drypoint prints from Minu are just lovely. Great characters, and beautiful printing. See more on her Flickr.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

enormouschampion

enormouschampion

Not a hugely stocked Etsy shop but some interesting bits and bobs, enormouschampion are a duo with some lovely printy stuff.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Charting the Beatles: Working Schedule, 1963-1966


Charting The Beatles