Here at Countryside Art Ltd, every customer, whether large or small, very well-known, or just starting up, are equally important to us.
But sometimes we get involved in very high-profile, prestigious projects, which are not only very interesting to our highly skilled team, but also our customers.
The first exciting project was being approached to screen-print print a cotton tea towel and tote bag for The British Museum (a very long-time customer), featuring Picasso’s original artwork. Both images would have been relatively easy to digitally print. But British Museum wanted the tea towel, and the canvas tote bag, screen-printed, as this much more closely reflected the qualities of the actual Picasso prints.
We are always up for a challenge! We like to think there is nothing, however difficult, we cannot print on to fabric.
The artwork separations required to create the screens were extremely difficult and stretched our very highly skilled designers to their limits. So the cyan and yellow exactly matched Picasso’s inks used on the Leaping Bulls printed tea towel, this also involved creating two special process colour inks from scratch.
The Still Life Under Lamp printed custom tote bag was printed in 5-spot colours which again had to exactly match Picasso’s print. The registration of this print was also difficult to achieve as it had to exactly reflect the fact the original print had been hand-printed and there were tiny overlaps and gaps, here-and-there, which had to be replicated.
The samples had to be submitted to the Picasso Foundation for approval. It took several attempts but by the third time we had the prints spot on to the original images and gained that all important ‘Yes, please proceed to production’.We were really proud of the results and made two videos of these beautiful tea towels and canvas tote bags being printed for posterity.
Another very interesting recent event, to which we were invited as suppliers, was the Houses of Parliament Christmas Fair. The shop buyers aim to actively promote UK-made products such as our custom tea towels and personalised aprons. The Christmas Fair gives the suppliers a chance to directly connect with MPs, employees within the Palace of Westminster and also the visiting public.
Our Director Lawrence and Designer Nandana manned our stand in the incredibly historic (and very cold!) Westminster Hall. Nandana had a great idea to take along a little silk-screen, squeegee and ink, so visitors to our stand could have a try at hand-printing for themselves. It proved so popular we ran out of cotton panels!
So, we hope you find these two small glimpses into our world interesting. They both demonstrate the high regard in which our company is held by some of the top organisations in the UK. And, as I mentioned at the top of the blog, our whole approach to quality and customer service is the same, for every one of our customers, whether they are ordering 25 personalised bags or 1000 printed tea towels. Everyone is equally important to us.
If you would like any more information on our products and services, please contact us via sales@countrysideart.co.uk, via our Contact Page, or give us a call on 01790 754 806.
Kathy Brookes, Sales Director
