Carole Waller

Carole Waller

Carole Waller is a visual artist who works with colour, light, textiles, glass, enamel and paint. She uses either figurative or site specific imagery to make paintings which become glass installations, clothing, textile hangings, or live projects and collaborations.

I AM CHEAPSKATE

I am cheapskate

Enthusiastic tea drinker, musician, writer

and illustrator.

Charlotte Farmer

Charlotte Farmer

Sara Mulvanny

Sara Mulvanny

Freelance Illustrator.

John Dilnot

John Dilnot

One-off box works.

Louise Evans

Louise Evans

Jewellery, textiles, found objects and

vintage clothing.

Catherine Hammerton

Catherine Hammerton

Home accessories, wallpapers and

fabrics.

Cathy Miles

Cathy Miles

Illustrative wire objects and wall pieces.

Sharon Elphick

Sharon Elphick

Limited edition and bespoke

photographic textile prints.

Lubna Chowdhary

Lubna Chowdhary

Ceramic tiles & products.

Johanna Basford

Johanna Basford

Hand printed wallpapers and home accessories.

New York brand Mother

Mother

Lela Tillem and Tim Kaeding recently joined forces to create a line of cashmere-soft jeans called Mother.

'Our idea was to create a brand that captured the excitement of our own newfangled denims. We are able to add a new element to the way people wear jeans in fit fabric finish and now feel.'

They discuss choice of name...

'We also like the various ways the word mother can be used in popular culture – the rocking ‘motha’, the bad mother, the tattooed biker mother, the domineering mother in Hitchcock films. The name really just stuck a chord, it sounded so powerful and tough.'

The website presents great video clips of the 'Mother I'd like to Film' summer 2011 collection. You can download a look book presenting stills of the videos and collection as a pdf file. Also,check out the link to their bedroom stories which presents both video and MP3 clips to help tell stories and discuss what going on in their world.

Product’s physical longevity

Emotional attachment: Developing lasting relationships with our belongings. These days, a product’s physical longevity will not prevent it from being thrown away if the owner no longer wants it. To avoid unnecessary waste of otherwise useful goods, is it time we should start to form emotional bonds with them? An article by Jonathan Chapman (a Senior Lecturer at University of Brighton, UK) discusses how waste is produced by products failing to sustain an emotional attachment to their users.

Design and Emotions

A teacup that shivers in response to its tea going cold. A chair that warms when you sit in it, revealing its aspirations to be soft and comfortable. A pan whose handle becomes impossible to grasp when it becomes hot to the touch. The animate characteristics of these everyday objects allow them to facilitate meaningful interactions with their users by actively responding to their environment and evolving through their conditions of use. Tara Mullaney

Emotions guide, enrich and ennoble life – they provide meaning to everyday existence and render the valuation placed on life and property. Moreover, with the power to entice us to select one particular item from a row of similar products, emotions have a considerable influence on our purchase decisions. Not only are emotions involved in our reasoning about what product to buy, but they also have a significant effect on post-purchase satisfaction and product attachment. In addition, the emotions we experience daily, including those we experience in response to the designed objects that surround us, have been shown to be main determinants of our general well-being. (Marco van Hout)

Through interviews with designers and experts Design and Emotions discuss the emotional content and effect that products, brands and design have.

Keep Calm Gallery

Keep Calm Gallery is an online gallery with prints available from a selection of artists, designers and printmakers from around the world.

In addition to the prints they have a growing collection of unique pieces of original art, postcards and screenprinted cards and a selection of screen printed cotton tea towels.

Gallery Blog Spot

All Tea Towels

All Tea Towels

Online company selling a wide range of cotton

and linen tea towels.

To Dry For

Todryfor

ToDryFor.com is an online boutique specialising in designer tea towels - a husband and wife team based in Oxford, England, sourcing over 100 tea towels from numerous designers.

In addition to acting as a retailer, they also produce their own ToDryFor range of artist-commissioned tea towels, promoting work by both prominent and up-and-coming artists and illustrators.

Teresa Green

Teresa Green a unique range of printed textiles designed and hand printed by Teresa Cole. The company was set up in 2000 after graduating in printed textiles from Loughborough University school of art and design. Fabrics are sourced from within the UK. Linen used comes from Ireland and inks used for printing are all water based.

The importance of the range having a function is also key- the utilitarian, functionality and the design play equal roles.

The items are a canvas for the prints, and are designed around the shape and layout of each object.

Teresa confesses to having a passion for antique kitchenallia- especially kitchen scales and ladle shaped spoons. Her grandparents have also fed her imagination with crammed sheds full of old garden objects and treasures.