We’re often asked how we source products for the business. I think the best small businesses start with engaging with things you love. Luke and I have always loved design, print and pattern, creativity and making and we’ve always looked for business partners who embody those same values. Finding new suppliers usually starts with a lot of leg work around trade shows, talking to people, meeting designers, makers and brand owners but once a relationship has been established it also involves building on that relationship for years.
The last 2 years have been hard with zoom calls replacing buying trips and catalogues replacing showrooms, so it has been with great excitement that we planned our first trip abroad to meet with 2 of our favourite Danish suppliers – Rice and The Dybdahl Co.
Although we’re not an exclusively Scandinavian design business we’ve always found a synergy with many of our Danish designers and the way they value design and quality. It’s part of the Danish mindset to value design. The Danes are immensely proud of their design history and rightly so. Danish Modernism had a huge impact on the world with the works of architects such as Arne Jacobsen changing the way architecture was perceived. He was much more than just an architect, designing interiors, furniture, clocks, flatware – the whole experience of his buildings and many of these designs are still produced today. This attention to detail in design is something the Danes seem to really understand and celebrate, and a trip to Copenhagen is inspiration in itself as there are shops as good as galleries.
One of the things about running a small business is that business takes over. The day to day ordering, staffing and maintenance become bigger than the reason you started the business in the first place, so this trip to Denmark was a real chance for Luke and I to reconnect with those reasons – how inspiring we find design and craft. Our trip started with a weekend in Copenhagen exploring these things. As well as visiting the Danish Architecture Centre and some of Copenhagen’s most beautiful shops, we took an evening out at Tivoli – the theme park and gardens in the centre of Copenhagen which is like no other theme park in the world. Each street lamp, ride, kiosk or pathway is beautifully designed.
See a little glimpse of Tivoli life here – magical design and an evening well spent.
A Visit to the Dybdahl Co
When we arrive at the Dybdahl Co Henrik Dybdahl is particularly eager to show us his original copies of Ernst Haekel’s Monograph on the Medusae. It took me ages to hunt these down in a flea market. It was before everyone was Ernst Haekel mad. You could only get them from a dealer now.” Haekel was a 19th Century scientist and virtuoso illustrator with an unbelievably vivid sense of colour and Henrik is one of his biggest fans. His hands linger with care on the leather bound covers of the books – obviously a prize possession.
Neither of the 2 companies we were visiting are typical “Danish Design” companies, but the thread that links them is the care, attention and value for design. Both companies are led by the creatives who started them and still have that care and attention for design that comes from that, valuing the details of the products they make. Henrik has years collecting, researching and working with old illustrations but the ways he remasters them is surprisingly modern. As a printmaker myself I’m particularly excited to see his process and the base from which he and his team of creatives work.
The artwork Henrik finds in old books is carefully remastered from high resolution scans. Cleaning up and remastering the artwork is a painstaking process to reproduce vibrant, clean colour on screen. Like the huge Haekel print we have in our window all Henrik’s prints are remastered at such a resolution that they can be reprinted in huge sizes, meaning the work has to be extremely detailed. Henrik and his designs then choose or make compositions from the artwork, cropping out detail or sometimes cutting prints in half such as the ever popular half fish.
Here Henrik shows us the original books by Ernst Haekel which include one of our favourite prints of their – the Discomedusae jellyfish, which is restored in its full beauty by Henrik and his team.
The Dybdahl Co is based in a re-appropriated supermarket that Henrik has recently acquired. There is imagery everywhere – the mundane supermarket interior transformed by large scale colourful prints. Even the goods lift has been re-appropriated as a gallery.
Henrik has rows of high quality large format Epson printers printing his remastered images and a team of people who pack and send them. This gives him total control over the colour reproduction and is one of the reasons we’ve always found his prints have a level of care and attention in the reproduction that is beyond most other similar prints. It’s exciting for us as small business owners to see how he’s built his business and brand around that care for quality and detail.
Henrik has a huge selection of artwork so after exploring Luke and I settle down into browsing images and choosing new selections of work for the shop. We’re particularly keen on our selection.
A Trip to the House of Rice
“Welcome home! I hope you bought your dancing shoes”. Unlike The Dydahl Co we have visited our friends at Rice many times before. We’ve been working with them for all 14 years Fig1 has been in business. If Danish minimalism is all about paired back black and white lines, the house of Rice is a step away from the norm. To say it’s a riot of colour would be wrong – Charlotte, Rice’s founder is the Queen of colour but that also means knowing when to rein it in. Her house is full of colourful objects but background colours are often neutral. There are oversize prints and paintings on the wall which provide single large blocks of colour.
After a day buying at the showroom – also beautifully done in Rice style – we’re at Charlotte’s house for the evening for supper in the garden and some inspiration. Charlotte Hedeman Guineau and her husband Philipe started Rice in 1998 and have been bringing their exciting and unique sense of colour and fun to the world ever since. One of the most inspiring things about Charlotte’s house is the way she mixes things – antique pieces of furniture beautifully restored have bright acid yellow jugs of flowers on top. Clean painted panelled walls have lamps like a rhino with an illuminated horn. “I like things around the home that make you smile,” explains Charlotte.
Check out our full range of Rice madness on our website here.
It’s also obvious that Charlotte loves entertaining – not just from the fact that she’s hosting this garden party for the buyers, feeding us generously and carefully and attentively spending time with each of her guests, but from the way the home is designed. The kitchen is open to the dining room. Doorways are all wide, often without doors so it’s easy to pass on the ground floor between the different areas. There are comfortable places to stop and enjoy your surroundings on the way with chairs placed where you can sit and admire a gallery wall of collected art, people’s pictures and crazy unusual objects. It’s like the whole house has been designed to make you comfortable, relaxed, interested and inspired.