I have been doing a bit of work for Fortnum and Mason this year (I have just finished the illustrations for their lovely Easter Eggs !!!) These 3 illustrations were created for press ads for the Guardian and the Times letting people know about their special xmas events, one was for cocktail making classes, xmas cooking evenings and childrens storytelling evenings - I'm hope you can work out which one is which ! Sometimes the difficult thing with doing illustrations is you have to fit things into shapes you would never normally do - but then sometimes these challenging things can be the best fun and make you stretch your imagination a bit too.
Working for Fortnums has been hard in another way, one of my favourite artists Edward Bawden did lots of work for them throughout his long career and I know that when they approached me it was because they wanted to get back some of the flavour of the playfulness of his designs, as such I have been doing my utmost to try and NOT look at any of EB's work in case I am influenced by him too directly !!! Anyway this is what I done for them !!!

My limited edition plate for Paul Smith was in The Independent Magazine, 29.11.08

My wall stickers were in the Christmas gift guide in The Observer Women magazine, December issue.

My cover for Cheryl Jarvis's book 'The Necklace'

Paul Smith Seasonal Gifts, 2008

I recently designed a charity Christmas card for St Judes , they are donating 75 pence from each card sold to Maggie's Centre

This is a big christmas pie for Fortnum and Mason Xmas 2008.

A few years ago I did a book jacket for Dara Horn's brilliant story 'The World to come' so I was really happy to recently be asked to submit a design for her forthcoming book 'All other night'.
This is the design that the publisher decided not to use but I thought it might be nice to display here. The story is based in the american civil war at the time of the burning down of Richmond, Virginia. The design is for the whole of the dust jacket so the front is on the right, middle spine and then the back is on the left.

a book jacket design that was fun to do.

Christmas border

A Christmas cracker for Fortnum & Mason

Fortnum & Mason's Christmas catalogue cover, inspired by Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Snow Queen'.

Check out my new ruler!

The Daily Rubbish, London Fashion Week

If you happen to be in Dublin pop along to the Leinster Gallery where they have an exhibition of Rob's work up until September 27th.
LEINSTER GALLERY

Rob has recently been working with Random House on some new covers for some Louis de Bernieres books. I'll post some of the others tomorrow. I think they look smashing!

Available Here And Here

Rob is currently on holiday but have no fear I'll be keeping you up to date with all the wonderful things he's been up to this year.
Today i'd like to show you this screenprint available for one month only at IF YOU COULD

Where is the summer??

Here is a detail from a vase hot from the kiln this morning. To see more of them please visit RYANTOWN

Life size ruler thingy.

I've been making these big rulers for measuring and recording growing humans. It's been nice working out in the yard in the sun this week.

Have been making Decals for glasses for the shop opening very very badly. We have been collecting every odd and mad shaped glass for the last month from local charity shops and have spent an age transferring them onto glasses it is so heartbreaking when they go into the kiln looking great and come out looking rubbish ! AARRGGHH !!!! I hate firing !!

I've just made these screenprints, they're available HERE and HERE

I've just had these wooden keys cut for my shop RYANTOWN

New tiles available at ETSY

New tiles straight from the kiln this morning!

I've donated a print to "Craft For China" It's being auctioned off on ebay See it and all the other donated items here

I'm opening a shop in Columbia Road soon so I've set up a blogspot for it. RYANTOWN

I decided to do two screenprinted editions of this papercut. Here they are - there's only ten available in each colourway.

This is quite a large papercut that took forever to do. All those stars and birds !

A bit more lustre on this one. I dont really know what I'm doing with these plates - but it's fun !

Been experimenting with onglaze lustres recently. This one is picked out in copper.

As described in the previous post, one of the ten plates for Paul Smith. The sentiment I realise is a bit optimistic, especially considering most English summers, but there is an option come late september to change it to 'Thanks. . . for nothing !

Busy in the studio at the moment hand painting ten plates for the 10th anniversary of Paul Smith's Westpourne Grove Shop. lovely Lorna's been drafted in as our new on-glaze deco supremo !!

Here are the pieces I made with Tatty Devine. Find out more here