Tracy’s Tailormade Tea Towel - the devil’s in the detail

The full picture

The client’s shop

A local and not-so-local vintage

Toby

Traditional Indian motif

Close-up of the weave and tea plant flower

Australia map

Polo player

Pooh bear

I’ve been asked to show some of the detail in this tea towel close-up, so here are the shots showing some of the many small illustrations that make up parts of the whole...

Tailormade tea towel - final art

Tailormade tea towel  © Peter Gander

Following on from a recent post where I showed this design as a pencil drawing/scamp, here’s the final artwork ready to be turned into a screen for printing (it will print green). Hand-painted brush and ink with hand-drawn marker on layout paper, scanned and reconstructed digitally.

Tailormade Tea Towel: Tracy’s ‘T’

v1.0 scamp for Tracy’s tea towel  © Peter Gander 2012

During our show at Olympia last week, we were commissioned to come up with a bespoke tea towel design (1 colour) as a keepsake for a client hosting a party in Sussex at the end of June. This is the first stage sketch, or ‘scamp’ as we call them in the trade. This’ll print in green on white cotton. The client’s name is Tracy and she is also conveniently nicknamed ‘T’, a perfect excuse for a ‘T’ towel if ever I heard one. Not only that but tea plantations are part of the family business, so a tea towel doesn’t get much more apt than this! Soft pencil on layout paper.

The real McCoy tea towels

As an artist sometimes you can’t beat the real thing and taking collection of your tangible design wafting around in big style on a cloth canvas is SO much better than the piece of paper you were looking at for months on end. Such is the case with our set of 5 (Jubilee to come) tea towels taken in last night. The colours were bang-on and the quality of the cotton excellent. We’ve also made them look trendy by hanging them on our magnolia tree. Hopefully you can’t see it’s spitting with rain. Well, it IS May in the UK. Buy ’em on Folksy

Tea towel delivery!

Buy ’em on Folksy

The 5 printed tea towels, the Queen taking centre stage.  © Peter Gander 2012

We took delivery of our 5 fabulous tea towels yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day folding, ticketing and wrapping a few hundred for our Kent, Sussex and Surrey shops plus a few online retailers too. If you’re out and about in any of these areas, you can buy them at: British Design British Made Battle, Sussex; Rising Star Tenterden, Kent; Smoke on the Water Sandwich, Kent; Nice Things Ramsgate; Murray’s General Stores, The Goods Shed, Canterbury, Kent; Feather & Fern Dorking, Surrey; ToDryFor.com (online); Carried Away Deal, Kent, Bourneside Gallery Gomshall, Surrey; Taking the Plunge, Whitstable, Kent Vintage Vacations Isle of Wight; PHG Cowes, Isle of Wight; Chique Antique, Ryde, IoW; Galerie Le Petit Chien, Navarrenx, SW France; Smith & Stephenson, Ryde, IoW; Den, Petersfield; Cabbage White, Midhurst, Sussex; Sparks Yard, Arundel, Sussex; Sussex Farm Foods, Bury, Pulborough. Thanks to all of our retailers above for their keen support! We’re gradually working our way out from the South East - next, look out Suffolk!

Teapot tea towels, wrapped and ticketed

Tea towel: You, me and a cup of tea

© Peter Gander 2012  You, me and a cup of tea

Another hand-drawn design for our Have a Gander tea towel range in ‘tea-leaf’ green. Original artwork drawn with dip pen and Indian ink. We now have over 10 independent Kent, Sussex and Surrey shops making orders for the tea towels and the brilliantly-named To Dry For specialist tea towel retailer has placed an order for our Jubilee design. Available May 2012.

Tea towel: Pig cuts

Pig cuts tea towel  © Peter Gander

Another in our range of Have a Gander tea towels featuring a slightly less orthodox-than-usual dividing of the pig’s meat including Sunday Roast and Bacon butties! Hand-painted with brush and ink and coloured digitally.

Tea towel: teapot

Teapot tea towel © Peter Gander

This one of our 5 new Have a Gander tea towel designs for 2012 in a lovely shade of slate grey. All hand-drawn and featuring ink and brush hand-lettered pure tea varieties (we’ll do a favourite fruity infusions one day) in the shape of a traditional teapot with tea leaf pattern wallpaper. Illustrated in Kent and printed in Great Britain on 100% cotton.

Tea towel: The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee design

Working on the layout

Inking out a 1st-stage visual in black and white

Drawing the corgis

Diamond Jubilee tea towel  © Peter Gander

To be launched at The Spirit of Summer Fair at Olympia, London this is one of a series of tea towel designs Fiona and I have devised to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Unapologetically patriotic and cheerful, it’s inspired by a playing card design and features a couple of flag-waving and crown-wearing corgis and is completely hand-drawn. Printed in Great Britain and available in Royal Blue on 100% cotton from 16th May 2012 at the fair and thereafter online.