Studio visit:Arthouse Meath

Arthouse Meath is one of our favourite stockists. We have been working together for many years. They work with adults living with epilepsy to produce artworks then create wonderful items like greeting cards, mugs, baby grows and many more. The range has grown stronger and stronger over the years, I'm always so looking forward to see their new designs and introducing them to our customers. I have been always a big fan but never visited their shop/studio based in Godalming to see the making process. It's often the case for the retailer as we are at the end of the supply chain. So I decided to hop on the train to visit the makers. It was such a treat for me to take a time off visiting the studio and meeting the artists and everyone works at Arthouse. I brought some pictures of Family Tree shop with Arthouse products displayed on the shelves to share with the artists. They looked all proud to see their designs sold at Family Tree and the pictures gave them positive encouragement to keep creating. Visiting studio is real perks of shop keepers!

Screen archives of new and old greeting card designs stored in printing studio upstairs.

There are wonderful splash of colours everywhere in the studio.

Stocks of mugs and jugs waiting to be packed and shipped to over 160 stockist all over UK.

These are only small part of greeting card range. It's so hard to choose which designs to stock at Family Tree.

Have a splendiferous weekend

Another week has gone.

Gosh.

We're very happy at Family Tree this week: we've got Rose De Borman ceramics and Gina Namkung's surprise balls in stock. I think that makes us the coolest shop in London right?
(there are also a few surprise balls in the web shop)

There are some new cards on the shop floor too.

Here are a few nice links to ease you in to your weekend. Happy poets day everybody!
Try not to cry from cuteness: A B C D E F Cookie Monster
Important life lessons: How to talk to sprogs
And the most heartbreaking: The Radium Girls

Have a marvellous weekend

Have a marvellous weekend sausages. We can't wait to welcome Rose De Borman next week - see you Wednesday night!

Here are some links to things we like that will please your eyes and brain

The Greenwich flag archive

The Buckminster Fuller Institute on Facebook is always sharing good things.

The Magic of Marble

This nice blog

Ciao!

Takako and Jo.

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Surprise balls!

We are lucky enough to have some of glorious Gina's surprise balls in stock! They're in our brick and mortar shop and some will go up in the webshop soon.

Eep! Here are some nice photos from Gina's Flickr account whilst we have a nice time photographing and generally gloating over our very special surprise balls.

Rose De Borman at Family Tree. June 24th - July 6th

Rose De Borman will be showing some new work along work (along with some old favourites) at the shop this month! It's going to be amazing. If you don't know Rose's work her website is well worth a browse. I've picked out some of my favourite bits too . . . 

the exhibition will run from Wednesday July 24th to Monday July 6th. There will be an opening event on the Wednesday too: with the opportunity to loiter around and nosey stuff with a beer in your hand.

See you there!

Latvia

We went buying in Latvia and it was pretty amazing! There will be some beautiful Latvian stuff in the shop soon. For now there's Takako's beautiful I heart Riga print in the webshop.

We arrived and went straight to our apartment which was an amazing, massive building - with amazing features like a tiled stove in each room. I liked this room best - which was painted in no less than 5 shades of pink.

Then we headed into Riga itself: browsing markets and shops . . . 

Checking out the views . . .

Everything in Riga is on a large scale: it feels spacious and quite imposing in places.

Finally we got on a very crowded bus and headed out to . . . the best craft fair in the world.

Full of amazing textiles, woodwork and pottery.

(I bought those slippers)

Latvian folk are very proud of their culture and traditional dress: and so they should be. It was so nice to see people of all ages dressing up, dancing, selling their wares and demonstrating traditional crafts.

The fair was in a forest so when we got tired we just scrambled up a nearby slope for a sit down (and maybe the odd bit of fried meat and potatoes).

We also had fun buying a lot of these amazing masks! They're made by a 77 year old lady from papier mache and they're so sweet. She's so clever at making nice expressive pieces: we ended up buying quite a few! Come see them in the shop soon.

It was a flying trip all in all but we did manage to make time for an enormous slice of cake in Riga's best tea shop: it has a glass upstairs level with beautiful views over a park and river.
Yep!
Well deserved.

Izzy in the shop

We've had Izzy with us yesterday and today (and Rob at times too). 

It's been lovely to see how she works. We played around making bonnets and headscarves and chewed the fat a little.

Izzy's new collection will be in her shop soon - so keep an eye.

Have a glorious weekend

Have a lovely weekend you nice sausages - her's our Jack demonstrating how he'll be kicking back this next coupla days.

Here are some things we liked this week

Orangutang and babies - I'm really sorry, I know you probably have things to do but you could take 5 minutes right?

Marimekko - knocking it out the park as usual with their latest floral.

This exhibition! - get down there! (if you're in London)

This swimming pool might not be so secret any more, see you there!

Izzy Knowles making nice things (with my fabric)

This is too much! How can that be real? Jeeps. Technology.

#ftfloral

 Well Clerkenwell Design Week is rolling along nicely - we're designing a couple of florals which we're not ready to show you yet: maybe tomorrow. And we've been talking to lots of lovely customers about printing and making things.
We're also running our #ftfloral hashtag on Instagram which is throwing up some really inspiring things! It's also nice to talk to people online: cement our little community. You can join in if you're on Instagram: just add the hashtag to your favourite pictures of flowers or florals.

A bunch of flour.

Did you know that after flour companies in the 1930s noticed people were making clothes from their flour sacks they started printing them with floral patterns.

That's nice huh? - you can find out more here.

Have a lovely weekend.

Have a lovely weekend folks - we're going to be working a little bit, Takako will be in the shop tomorrow and we'll both be readying ourselves for that big old load of work next week. (Though I might manage a daytrip to the seaside on Sunday). Here's a nice pic of dirty charcoal work

And here are our best things for the week:

90s RuPaul - just the best. WERK!

Jennifer Higgie on Instagram - always topping us up with inspiring 20th century artists.

Space themed vintage baubles - we didn't know that was a thing. Imagine having to package that for the post.

Talking to children - or adults. Nice idea from Nuria Perez.

And finally - Mieke's face cushion.

See you Monday!

Takako and Jo.

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