After my recent book-making demonstrations as part of the Words, Words, Words event at Selfridge (and in connection with The Idler Academy, I have been delighted to get a fair bit of feedback.

Handmade Jane reported the event on her blog, with pictures too, including this one (left) showing her friend Kathryn from Yes I like that in mid-stitch.

“He had lots of examples of his own handmade books to show us, writes Handmade Jane, all literally made from bits of tat that were hanging around his house.

“The workshop was completely casual, but so much fun, and I took home bucket-loads of enthusiasm, plus the beginnings of a new skill.

“As well as being charming, enthusiastic, thrifty, creative and extremely tall, John-Paul really urged his audience to try new things.  We don’t have to be good at them and they don’t have to be perfect, it’s the trying that’s the important thing. Thanks J-P, I couldn’t agree more.”

(Thanks to you too, Handmade Jane, for your kind words.)

Another who came along was Jesse Chan-Norris, who has a Tumblr blog like me, where he shows the “awesome book (with fold-out pages)” that he made at Selfridges. We spoke briefly afterwards (see left).

But Jesse did not come alone.

Kavita Kapoor attended the class too, expecting to be shown some very finished books (“it was billed as a masterclass,” she writes on her blog), and she was dismayed by what followed.

“John-Paul Flintoff bounced onto the stage to show us a series of books he had made which was rather disappointingly amateur. Bits of paper stuck together to make a sketch pad for poor art work.”

Ouch. Reading this for the first time, I wondered whether it had been wise to take along sketchbooks that I had, after all, made and filled for my own purposes, rather than to impress anybody.

“We were shown book after book, Kavita continues, and I wondered why I had bothered extracting myself from the computer for an evening. John-Paul’s passion was unrelenting. He continued as the audience sniggered and laughed at this un English display of excitement for the amateur.”

But happily I didn’t notice the sniggering, and Kavita - to her great credit - stuck with it.

“It was suddenly our turn. We were shown how to sew a few bits of A4 together. The possibility of designing my own book become exciting. I had no idea how to fill it. I could make my very own notebook and in this health and safty limited world I was been given a needle and thread in a public space. I quickly made a notebook in the time that it would take to plan a trip to Muji for my regular notebook.

“John-Paul Flintoff then showed us a one page book that I wished I had for my paper obsessed youth. Immediately I knew a how to fill this book and it was exciting. From imagination to reality in minutes.

“I am astonished how delighted I was at the end of the session. John-Paul Flintoff was incredibly knowledgeable about book making but chose to focus on what was accessible. I would have been very entertained to learn about mass production hard cover book binding but it wouldn’t have changed my life as learning about the one page note pad.”

Hurrah!

1:03 pm  •  21 March 2012

Acrylic on board, based on sketch from 2008.

12:52 pm  •  19 March 2012

On the morning of Mother’s Day, N and I were rather dismayed to realise that she had not in fact prepared something earlier, as is customary, at school.

So I popped a bit of fabric into an embroidery frame and she got to work with fabric pens. Hey presto, some time later, here is the finished result.

10:04 am  •  18 March 2012  •  1 note

This is Heini Riitahuhta. She’s an artist, working with ceramics. (If you look closely, you can see her design pasted on paper to one of the pots she’s holding - and the finished, fired pattern in her other hand.)

I met Heini at the amazing Arabia factory in Helsinki, where she’s one of several eminent artists who enjoy access to materials and facilities otherwise used to make the company’s classic cups and plates, including the Moomin mugs that sell so well internationally. One of the other artists, just down the corridor from Heini, has been working in this way for 50 years.

The great thing about this arrangement is that none of the artists have any contractual requirement to produce commercial designs - only to pursue their own interests. But both sides agree that the arrangement produces mutual benefits. Among those benefits are the artworks you can see around the building, include these, which I photographed hastily while I was shown round by Taina Gronqvist (pictured).

And as my first picture shows, the artists do also (not infrequently) produce commercial designs.

I went to Helsinki to find out why it has been given the title of World Design Capital 2012, and it’s hard to think of a better reason than this arrangement between a major manufacturer - under pressure, like all businesses of its kind, to export manufacture to cheaper locations overseas - and the local design community.

11:13 pm  •  17 March 2012  •  1 note

My Finnish friend Maarit Kivisto wearing the overcoat she decorated to broadly traditional design she made up as she went along.

12:27 pm  •  16 March 2012

This glass (like the jug) was designed to evoke the ripple effect on a pond - but also to conceal imperfections in the glass, when raw material was hard to come by and included eg., old silk bottles. The perfect recycling solution? Today the Arabia factory in Helsinki still makes this design

12:21 pm  •  16 March 2012

This cushion from Helsinki design museum shows weaving with paper and silver birch during was when other fibre was hard to lay hands on. Nice example of resourceful impro

12:15 pm  •  16 March 2012

Just the right weight and size and balance. Lovely colour. At my Helsinki hotel

7:07 am  •  16 March 2012

By Iittala in Helsinki

7:05 am  •  16 March 2012

Finnish textile wall hanging

4:33 pm  •  15 March 2012