Designer Desire: Rob Hodgson

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Born in 1988, Rob Hodgson is a British designer, illustrator and author. His début author/illustrated title, The Cave, was picked by BookTrust to be distributed free to every reception-aged schoolchild in England.

My inspirations mostly come from ways of making and thinking about making, rather than stylistic influences.
And I like a lot of folks who deconstruct and reconstruct form and colour. Like a lot of the early 20th Century European painters (Klee, Mattise, Miro, Picasso etc).
The Bauhaus, Black Mountain college, mid century American designer/illustrators (Girard, Rand etc). And also big visual thinkers like Bruno Munari, Hockney, John Cage.
Rob Hodgson

His books, including The Woods, An A to Z of Monsters, Maisie Mammoth’s Memoirs and Good Day for a Hat are available to purchase from Waterstones and other booksellers.

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Designer Desire: Charles Tunnicliffe

We’ve been spending hours & hours in the garden this past week; it’s been warm and sunny and lots of fledglings and their protective parents have been flocking to our feeders. We’ve been identifying the species and their calls; it got us thinking about the illustrations of Charles Tunnicliffe.

Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe (1901-1979) was one of the UK’s best known and loved wildlife artists. Originally from Langley near Macclesfield, where he grew up on a farm, he won a scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art. From the 1940s, for the last 35 years of his life, he worked from his studio in his home, Shorelands, located in Malltraeth, Anglesey.

We know him best as the illustrator of the “What to look for in…” series of Ladybird nature-themed children’s books. We have the full set – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter – in our personal collection. Also in our library by him is Shorelands Summer Diary (1952) and A Sketchbook of Birds (1979).

As well as 250+ books, he illustrated a number of the RSPB member magazines. In 1995, at a Sotheby’s auction, 114 of the original artworks were sold by the charity. It raised £210,000; the most expensive lot, an illustration of a partridge, sold for £6,440.

There are a number of books by and about him available on Amazon and an array of his prints (and a couple of limited editions) for sale on eBay and Etsy.

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Additional image credits:

ArtUK

Designer Desire: Alfons van Heusden

Alphonsus Josephus Hubertus van Heusden (1930-2000), otherwise known as Alfons van Heusden, was a Dutch graphic designer and illustrator. He was a lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague during the 1980s. He’s best known, though, for creating the graphics on many children’s jigsaws and card games that were produced by Jumbo Puzzle.

We have a couple of examples of his designs available in our webshop. We love his work so much, we included an image of one of them on the reverse of our business cards! It’s the game in the top, right of our collection above – and it also happens to be an item that’s in the permanent collection of Amsterdam Museum.

We’ve recently seen another couple of his items currently for sale on Etsy.

Working alongside poet and children’s writer, Willem Wilmink, he illustrated the latter’s 1980 book – ‘Spook tussen spoken’ (which translates as Ghost between ghosts).

He illustrated Even naarde brievenbus (Just to the letterbox), Hahaha, je vader (Ha ha ha, your father) and Groot groter grootst (Big bigger biggest) written by Ivo de Wijs.

In 1981, he designed a series of Christmas cards for children, one of which is the bottom image in our montage.

Image credits:

JungleKey | Pinterest

Price Points: Line drawn faces

Isn’t it funny when you notice something coming into vogue? A couple of years ago, it was flamingoes and cacti; this year, I’ve been seeing line drawn faces adorning all manner of homewares.

Simple, often monochrome visages on wall art, soft furnishings and pottery & glass items. I love the minimalism of the trinket dish, but it’s the colour and tribal feel of the wall mask that has captured my heart the most.

Jesmonite trinket dish – abstract line drawing face by Fawn and Rose: £12.00, NOTHS
Faces lampshade: £5.75, Etsy
Abstrasso mask wall hanging: £198.00, Anthropologie

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