We Made This Ltd

Archived posts: Shop

The best vintage store in London

We made our way to East Dulwich today to visit one of our favourite shops in London (in fact, it's one of our favourite shops just about anywhere).

North Cross Vintage (on the corner of Fellbrigg Road, just off North Cross Road, London SE22) is one of those perfect treasure troves, stuffed to the rafters with a fantastic collection of books, signs, packaging, tins, woodblock lettering, furniture and other assorted ephemera.

It's run by the lovely John & Belinda, who hand pick all the stuff. The shop was originally tucked away in a basement on the nearby Lordship Lane before they were flooded out – but the enforced move ended up being a good thing, as their new location has far more space.

While they replenish their stock after the Christmas rush the shop is only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays (from 11 to 6), but from February they'll generally be open Thursday through Monday each week.

There are a few more shots on Alistair's Flickr set. Do pop along if you get the chance – tell them we sent you.

16 January 2010 | 3 Comments

Letterforms

Physical letterforms… just delicious. We've spotted a spate of new ones available to buy around town lately. The ones above are from the newly opened Anthropologie store on Regent St. (They only have a limited UK website so far, but you can check out their full range on the USA site.) The zinc letters come in two sizes, the 8" set above, and a huge set that stand 25" tall – as with the ampersand below.

Just round the corner from there, at Do Shop (on Beak Street), we saw these set of Metalvetica letters from Seletti, which each stand around 35cm high, and as with the Anthropologie set have holes in the back for hanging on walls. They're weighted too, so will sit happily on a shelf.

And at the same store, you can also pick up ceramic Clarendon letterforms in black or white, also from Seletti, which stand about 25cm tall.

Lettertastic eh?

25 October 2009 | 3 Comments

Swifty at No Vacancy

After we recently posted about Swifty, Ken Tan from the urban art online store Project Midas (based in Singapore) got in touch to tell us about the new exhibition of Swifty's work they're hosting at the No Vacancy gallery in Melbourne.

Ken revealed that the show will feature original work, as well as "a remix of the classic Vegemite brand, limited edition prints and t-shirts, plus a live painting of a Suzuki Swift car".

The show runs from 5 to 14 March 2009.

24 February 2009 | No Comments

Back to Basics this Christmas

Sorry, we're a bit late flagging this one up, but if you're heading into town this weekend, make sure you check out the Back to Basics shop run by the graduate students from LCC's MA Graphic Design Course.

They've set up their pop-up store on Newburgh Street (just off Carnaby Street – you'll find both the rather lovely Beyond the Valley and Levi's boutique store Cinch there too). It's got a fine collection of hand-printed posters (A1 for £20, A2 for £12 and A3 for £8) as well as a smattering of books and other odds and sods.

It's open today and tomorrow from 11 to 7, and on Sunday from midday to 5pm.

19 December 2008 | No Comments

Pictures on Walls Open Weekend

Hmmm. Wonder if this will be insanely busy, or just ridiculously busy?

The folks at Pictures on Walls – they're the go-to-guys for Banksy's work, and put on Santa's Ghetto each year – are having an open-weekend at their print studio in Shoreditch.

They're having a lottery where four people will win an edition of Banksy's 'Very Little Helps' print, and the next hundred get first refusal on buying a copy. Which is gonna guarantee queues round the block, particularly with the tickets just a quid each, and proceeds going to Sightsavers International.

We'd be far more chuffed to get one of Antony Micallef's prints though. Lovemaker (above) and Bethlehem (below) are both up for grabs in the same way as Banksy's. The prints were created from originals painted by Micallef after last year's Santa's Ghetto in Jerusalem. Banksy might drum up the headlines, but Micallef is the man. You can pick up a tasty book of his stuff over at Lazarides.

There's going to be a stack of other new work, and there was talks of tours round their studio too. It all happens from 11am to 7pm on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 December at the POW Studio, 16 Willow Street, London EC2A 4BH.

See you in the queue.

2 December 2008 | No Comments

Mutate Britain

We made our way across to Cordy House on Curtain Road on Friday evening to catch first show in the new Behind the Shutters gallery that's just opened on the site.

And as first shows go, it's a belter. Mutate Britain is hosted by the Mutoid Waste Company - you might have caught their huge junkyard sculptures and performances at Glastonbury – and there are some incredible pieces MWC members Joe Rush and Giles Walker (including Rush's Home Guard, above).

It's a great exhibition – a bit like a fantastic degree show in a squat. Arranged over four floors, it's got a mix of sculpture, prints, installations, performances, and even a live screenprinting area run by Print Club. Check out Alistair's Flickr set for more exhibition goodness.

The gallery is open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, from 1.30pm to 10pm, and it looks like the show will be running until Sunday 21 December.

24 November 2008 | 2 Comments

Design Event 08

We made our way up to Newcastle last weekend to check out the fantastic Design Event festival, and found some really tasty stuff.

Up first, at the Design Event Mart at BALTIC, was recent graduate Sarah Sheehan's stunningly lovely Lost for Words jewellery collection (above). Each piece featured text from a book, and the books themselves were then lasercut and used as packaging for the pieces. Sarah doesn't have a site up yet, but you can contact her via email.

Over at Electrik Sheep, Eelus had created a fantastically dark show, and we particularly loved the triptych of Splasher, Swinger and Skipper (above). The show stays up until 1 November.

Meanwhile, the [re]design gang had moved their Lighten Up show from the relatively restrained surroundings of London's 100% Design to the incredible space inside the Tyne Bridge's North Tower, and the show looked fantastic there.

For more info, check out our full preview, take a look at Alistair's Design Event Flickr set, or heck, check out the official Design Event Flickr sets.

Oh, and a big thank you to Beckie and Karen at Design Event; and also to the mercurial Dan Civico for guiding us around the highlights of Newcastle's nightlife.

24 October 2008 | 1 Comment

A design guide to Amsterdam

Amsterdam: Tulips, bikes, canals, dope, prostitutes in windows, lots more bikes. And heck, a wealth of simply fantastic design.

We nipped over to the capital of the Netherlands this weekend to check out the city's design scene, and particularly to take a gander at Experimentadesign, the Lisbon based design festival that's taking place in Amsterdam for the first time this year.

The festival kicked off on 18 September, and it runs through until 2 November – a fairly impressive six and a half weeks of design goodness. We checked out a few of the main shows: Droog's Urban Play, The Sunday Adventure Club, and Come to my place.

Urban Play comes in two parts: the first part is an exhibition that showcases the work of a variety of artists and designers who are injecting a bit of fun back into the city. The selection of artists is great, and we particularly dug the work by Zurich's Windowzoo (above), and Montreal's Roadsworth (more on him in a later post). The show mainly uses short films to present each designer's work, which is good as far as it goes – it would have been brilliant to see more actual examples. But that's a minor grumble about a great show.

The second part of the exhibition is a series of interventions alongside Amsterdam's IJ Riverfront by twelve designers, including Stefan Sagmeister. Unfortunately, his incredibly beautiful piece, Obesessions make my life worse and my work better, made of 300,000 eurocent coins, got cleaned away within hours of being created, by a rather overzealous local police force (and a distinct lack of clear communication).

Back in town, the Sunday Adventure Club (above) is a wonderfully playful lo-fi exhibition, showcasing "citizens who through their personal passions have initiated activities in public space", carving out spaces for play in the dense urban landscape. We particularly like the take-away instruction sheets for creating all kinds of fun stuff, from Seed Bombs to Match Rockets.

Meanwhile, Come to my place is a great show that has invited designers from eight cities around the world to create room-sets filled which "exemplify the way in which the global citizen defines their individuality by making a personal choice from the vast resources of the design industry and the shop around the corner". Good stuff.

Away from Experimentadesign, we checked out a bunch of exhibitions and design stores.

Unfortunately Amsterdam's home for modern art, the Stedelijk Museum, is closed at the moment, having left its temporary digs at the Post CS Building in anticipation of setting up home in its newly renovated original building at the end of 2009. In the meantime they've got a series of temporary shows happening as part of their Stedelijk in the City project (check the site for details); as well as regular shows at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA). We checked out the latest show by Marijn Van Kreij, who creates brilliant hand rendered textual pieces (above).

We also stumbled across the Netherlands Media Art Institute, currently hosting a brilliant show Sonic Voices, Rocking Hard which features a variety of artists, film-makers and musicians working at the intersection of art, sound and music. We particularly liked the 3D version of Bjork's fantastic Wanderlust promo (long download but worth it) from Encyclopedia Pictura; and were blown away by Johan Renck's promo for The Knife's Pass This On (below).

We also checked out a couple of photography shows. Over at the rather wonderful Foam (Fotografiemusuem Amsterdam) there were a selection of shows, including the incredible Hyena & Other Men series (below) from Pieter Hugo, which is running until 2 November. The images have been doing the rounds on the web, but seeing them full size is just incredible. They're stunningly beautiful.

Just along the road from Foam you'll find Huis Marseille, Amsterdam's self-proclaimed first photography museum, currently showing Cy Twombly's dry prints (until 23 November).

Of course, it's not just about looking at lovely stuff, it's about taking it home too, and Amsterdam's packed full of delicious design stores.

We made our way first to the daddy of the bunch, the Droog store, which features a range of limited edition pieces (like the Crystal Virus from Pieke Bergmans, above), as well as a bunch of more affordable but equally imaginative products.

But, we were far more impressed by the simply wonderful Frozen Fountain, which is just dripping with every manner of design loveliness, including the Zeppelin chandelier from Flos (below). It's our new favourite shop.

We also loved the Nijhof & Lee bookstore (a bit like the UK's Magma, but with more old books); Wonderwood, which stocks, well, furniture made of wood; and the lovely De Weldaad, which is packed with antiques and "architectural artefacts". They even had a bottle-drying rack (below), just like the one what Duchamp made famous.

For the fashionistas, there's a wealth of second-hand clothing stores, or if you're looking for something a little more contemporary, check out Concrete and SPRMRKT, both achingly hip.

You can check out all of Alistair's shots from the trip on his Amsterdam Flickr set, and we've put a Google Map with all of this stuff on, and more besides. We used the Time Out Shortlist Amsterdam and also the fabulous guide created by Danielle de Lange at The Style Files.

(And if all that's given you a spot of wanderlust, you can also check out our guides to Paris and Newcastle.)

13 October 2008 | 4 Comments

Design Event ’08 Preview

Hot on the heels of the gargantuan (and slightly overwhelming) London Design Festival comes the far more intimate and friendly northern version, Design Event, which gets busy from 9 to 26 October 2008.

We nipped up there this summer to get a feel for the city, and had a grand old time – read all about it on our Design Guide to Newcastle.

The full line up for the festival has just been released. Helpfully, Newcastle is the perfect size for walking round, and you can wander from show to show in minutes – so we thought we'd create a walking tour for your pleasure and perambulation.

This year's event is arranged around the theme of Northern Design, looking right across Northern Europe to see what's cooking from BALTIC to the Baltic states.
First up, there's a trio of shows at King's House, just near the station, all running from 10-25 October.

Hidden in Plain View is a group show from designers across Northern Europe, who've looked at the tradition of steganography (the art and science of writing hidden messages) which is apparently traditionally popular on Scandinavian postcards, and they've created their own selection of postcards for viewers to decipher.

Staying at King's House, the folks from If you could have put together a showcase of the latest raw design talent spilling out of Sunderland, Teeside and Northumbria Universities, exhibiting alongside some ex-students who've gone on to make it big. They're all confronting the question: If you could do anything in the North, what would it be?

And before you head on from there, you can check out Magnetic North, a show by Marcus Diamond from Neasden Control Centre.

Just up the short walk away you'll find the fantastic Electrik Sheep shop and gallery, which will be showing a stack of new work from Eelus (above). If you're up in that part of town already, the show opens on Thursday 2 October at 6pm.

Sticking with the illustration vibe, across toward the centre of town is the Tradition show from the Lobster Foundation, featuring work from ten of the bestest designers and illustrators kicking around in Scandinavia, including the ever wonderful Stina Persson (above).

Heading south from there, the Designed & Made Gallery is putting on show called MadeNorth, looking at cultural similarities and differences between Scandinavia and north-eastern England.

Keep going south to catch the fantastic Lighten Up show from the folks at [re]design, fresh from its success at the 100% Design. There are some delicious bits in the collection, and they're exhibiting in the Tyne Bridge Tower, so it should be fantastic. And keep an eye out for more sustainable lighting cleverness from the folks at We Make, with their Beryl and Friends collection of lights popping up round town.

Nip along the river past the Gateshead Millennium Bridge to Baltic, where you'll find the Design Event Mart, selling a vast selection of work from the brightest and the best of the local talent, including Alex Underwood's brilliant Speaker Buddies, fresh from their trip down to the London Design Festival (and yep, we've shown you them before, but come on, they're great!)

And while you're there, check out the latest shows from David Shrigley and Steve McQueen, and catch the wonderful Yoshitomo Nara show before it closes on the 26th.

There are a bunch of other Design Event shows on, in Sunderland and County Durham, as well as a selection of great talks. If you want to keep up to date, just sign up for the Design Event E-bulletin.

24 September 2008 | No Comments

A design guide to Newcastle

Living in a city like London, where there's constantly another show opening to attend, another private view to check out, another must-see product launch to go see, it can be easy to find yourself never venturing outside of Zone 6. If the world is on your doorstep, why go for a walk?

But, heck, there's a wealth of incredible stuff outside the M25 if you just take a look.

So we were dead excited when the good folks at Design Event recently got in touch to invite us up to take a look at Newcastle's design scene. So, come with us as we take you on a journey up north…

(more…)

18 August 2008 | 7 Comments

Blog

GRAB OUR FEED

ELSEWHERE

CATEGORIES

ARCHIVES

OTHER BLOGS WE DIG