Nov 29th–Dec 3rd

And the week has changed from 5 days to 7.  I will deal with Saturday and Sunday in a separate blog! As we get deeper in the Christmas season this is what happens. Work that is booked starts coming in whilst lots of last minute work start creeping in.

A few months ago I had a talk with Tom Freud of Atom Events concerning business practise. We have worked with Tom for almost 5 years and I thought ‘who better to ask advice on practise?’ We went for a drink and that resulted in me coming up with our job scaling scheme whereby we work to a 4 day turnaround. 3 days is 25% more, 2 days is 50% next day is double. Weekend is triple! But it also meant that we implemented a £50 minimum fee regardless of job. I must confess I did feel bad having to do something like this but business is business and there are bills to pay.

The day I rewrote or Price List Info Sheet to reflect this we applied it to a few jobs and the clients were a little shocked but completely understood, as they wanted the work urgently. Just goes to show that Artisans should not underestimate business practise. Dont get me wrong, it takes a lot out of us to conceptualise this, and then we have to come to terms with it, and then implement it. But I digress.

Anyway, the week started off with a stupid tube strike so I shut the studio as the hassle is simply not worth it. Besides there was enough writing that needs done so working on the website from home as well and catching up on correspondence proved useful.

Tuesday early start and snow! And you know what snow means – cold! Got in at 730 and hoped straight in to writing. This week saw us signing 1500 Christmas cards for a client. Angelo, Keiko, Nicola and myself all worked on them as they we aim for our turnaround time of 4 working day. This is more tedious than time consuming. What clients fail to understand is mistakes will happen, ink will not work on the card but also repetition causes the brain to skip. Needless to say we got them done.

I had to come off the job as the work from Steffi Beeck from Specific Media came in – guess what – I had to be one of Santa’s Elves – can you imagine? I had to handwrite 10 letters.  The thing I dislike most about handwriting large blocks of text is the with every word you write the possibility of an error increases and once you mess that up, well you just have to start over. I managed to get them to opt for Colourplan Cream over Pergamenata. I like Pergamaenata a lot, it had the perfect colour and look for the job but once it was folded it, the score was rigid and cracked. I used Windsor and Newton Lamp black and a Manuscript Pen Company Round hand 4 nib.

Wednesday saw more snow. Someone emailed me to ask how I start the day so this is what happens – if there is staff the day before, I come in, at about 730/8 – we are not open for business until 10 though as I usually leave at 6 or 7, sometimes 8 or 9, or 10 depending on what is on. So I come in and switch the coffee machine on, pack away the dishes and cups which have been washed up and then make my coffee. Sit at the computer and check emails, as we get emails in the night! Reply to what I need to reply too and leave what Sarah or Angelo have to deal with. Check Facebook and my other profiles and if there is time reply. But which time I have finished my coffee. I get a pint of water, drink half of it, go wash my hands and head down stairs. Once I have mixed up gouache and get the jobs I am working on set up on various desks I finish my pint of water, head upstairs, check email, get another pint of water and scrub my hands. This gets done every hour or so. Needless to say my the skin on my hands are dry. I moisturise at night but that much washing is hard on them, but it beats dirty work!

Wednesday saw a job for some Placecards for Friday, from Louise Jackson at Burberry. We have started stocking white and cream Placecards, Placement Envelopes and Escort Cards. Louise is great to deal with. She is always pleasant and funny, and then she said she was leaving. I was saddened by this. It is always great for people to move on they take us with them but it is always sad to know that you need to develop a new relationship, it is hard work! But we are here to help.

Rebecca at The Communication Store also called, needing names on invitations and envelopes. I had a brief chat with her and we decided to do the Placecards at the same time as well as next week is already booked solid.

Thursday saw my working frantically on finalising my course materials for my workshop at the British Museum in conjunction with the Book of the Dead Exhibition – more of this on Saturday!

We also got a call from the lovely Polly at Brides Magazine for some name son the backside of some envelopes for a shoot – odd, but brilliant concept! Envelopes are on its way. It also saw the agreement by the British Fashion Council, thanks to Sophie at Honest, to get 450 placecards and 450 seating cards (Placecards with a table number at the back) done! The are due in tomorrow and needed on Monday end of play! You know what that means – yep working on Sunday! Sarah and I left work at 5 to get to Peggy Porschen’s New Shop opening and Christmas party!

We arrived at Peggy’s and who greets us but none other than Polly! The envelopes did not arrive – how we laughed. I did come in on Friday to find them there though. The party was great. Peggy is a goddess! Apart from always looking beautiful and elegant, would love to see her baking with flour everywhere but somehow I don’t think she would look like that. The food was AMAZING. The little Christmas Puddings, miniature mince pies, cookies, lethal! I could not stop stuffing my face! And cosmopolitans – those were very very bad!

My wonderful friends Javier and Tony from By Appointment Only Design produced some stunning (no surprise there) arrangements for the shop and a table boa of flowers which was magical. I was so happy when they turned up. It is great when professional practise turns into supportive friendships – those boys are great and I am so thrilled they are in my life.

Friday saw me at a Palaeography Conference on Illuminated Manuscripts in the Digital age. I try to do a little bit of academic work very now and again, or the practical will burn me out. Saw Michelle Brown (got grilled about my studies), Chris de Hamel, Pamela Robinson – always fun but had to leave early to go to the British Museum to drop off my exemplars for tomorrow for copies.

Sarah fell today. I was nearly in tears when I read the message. She was heading out of home and slipped on some ice and serious injured her arm. The text was sent from hospital. I felt stick to my stomach.

I left the conference and headed to the studio. Polly’s cards are stilling there bright gold and all! Angelo finished proof reading the TCS stationery and got Rebecca to send a courier for them. Louise had to cancel her job because the attendees could not fly in due to bad weather. We sent the cards on anyway! Annika at TCS called to say her menus were a definite go ahead. She sent a sample of what the paper would be like. The paper was so thick, I double checked with here that is was going to be thin enough (350gsm) to be printed on and she said yes. Looking forward to that job on Monday.

I left early to take all the stuff I need for the workshop at the British Museum home so I did not have to go back and forth. Ali was still working hard when I got home, so popped in an episode of Supernatural, am trying to finish season 4, when he was ready we headed out to Su-Fang’s, from the Royal Academy, leaving party. Andrew, Debbie... everyone was there! It was a great occasion even if for a sad reason. We did not stay late as I needed to get some sleep from the night before and needing to be ready to teach Cursive Hieroglyphs! Am a little nervous but so excited too

November 22nd–26th

 

Looks like not that much happened this week

Nicola came into the studio to work on the Monday.

Tuesday saw Angelo and I doing some moving to give him a a drawing table we use for proof reading. I feel this will make it seem more like he is working like a scribe! It seemed to work in that he felt it made a difference.

Last week I called Aylson at GFSmith to ask if we could get some light coloured Colourplan samples in A5. They arrived today – so excited to play with them but funnily enough it seems even though things are a little quite I still cant find the time to get to the box.

CAT HAMMOND! Yeah! I have not spoken with Cat in ages and now comes a job from her and I have to talk with her about the stock and delivery dates. It is always great when someone you like crops up in life.

Thursday saw me once again at the INK Exhibition at UCL but this time I am demonstrating Formal Calligraphy which contrasts starkly with the modern and free form lettering I did two weeks ago. I decided to cut quills to show attendees and demonstrate writing out some Textualis Quadrata most commonly referred to as ‘gothic’. I took some vellum and papyrus for people to see but it was principally about how ink works. My good friend, Stephen Quirke form the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology came by to see me demonstrating. I also met .... who practises Farsi Calligraphy. We had a great chat about ink and reeds and paper.

It turned out to be quite an interesting day with Marigold from the palaeography department at UCL, coming by to say hello and chat about writing. It was freezing though and am glad for the warmth and friendship of Rhiannan and Subadrah! We had a great time talking shop.

There are some videos to post as well. One on the actual writing and one on quill cutting. Will get those posted and let you know where.

Friday came and went without event! Sarah not in but half way through the afternoon Gerri Sweetland turned up looking radiant. We talked shop as there are a few up coming jobs to design and follow up the printing of but also to deal with the calligraphy on.

I gave her a tonne of samples to take with her.

Sunday

Nov 15–21 Sarah’s Back!

First, let me apologise for this post being so late – the Christmas Rush is upon us. Not to mention reading bits about blogging and it says not to write more than 500 words as it is difficult to keep people’s attention – so if you feel the long blogs are great let me know if not will happily cut it down!

So Sarah got back! yeah! I miss her so much when she is gone. Not to mention the fact that I get only half of my work done when she is not here and I have to talk with clients, which, believe you me, they seem to dislike more than I do! But really, looking forward to having her having her back in studio.

The week started off with invoices to chase. Why is it you do work for clients quickly and have to turn around and beg them to pay. I did threaten one client that I would write a blog about the hell we have had with them and name them and the outstanding invoices and all the work we did. Needless to say, once that was suggested they paid pretty quickly.

We started the week with a small, last minute job for The Spectator. Did that, had it proof read and send back quickly and then it was on to planning for the week.

I spend Monday afternoon prepping for a 3 hour Lecture-Demo I give, usually to university students, on the history of the alphabet from 500BC to the present. Had a meeting with the BRILLAINT Alyson Hurst at GFSmith and some of the colleagues. I love those guys so much!

Tuesday morning saw me heading off to Birmingham to Birmingham City University to teach so this Demo-Lec. left home at 7am and was in BrummyLand 9. Got a coffee with Colette Jeffrey (Graphic Design Lecturer) and set up. It took about 30 minutes to set up which was good as it was being recorded. So once that is available will post it. The talk went well, was dead tired and had to rush back to London after. Fortunately Sarah was in studio dealing with all that need to be done, and so were Angelo and Nicola.

Wednesday saw me frustrated with the tubes again – it just seems to work wrong when you leave home to get in early. Spoke with Claire at GSP! So lovely to deal with! Steffi at Specific Media also called about writing some of Santa’s Letters – right, me, and elf! Great! Completed the Jo Malone Job for the beautiful Jess and had the surprise of the week – my Tabriz Roll arrived. The buzzer rang and I opened the door and there was Alyson Hurst with the roll, I nearly fell over 

Of course I had to play with the colour! Folded this up and posted it to Yves (see below for the envelope it went it, i.e. last week)

Thursday saw me being filmed in the studio by a crew from the British Museum. The little clip was on writing Egyptian hieroglyphs – the cursive form used in the Book of the Dead. This will be posted later too!

Friday saw Angelo and I doing some more moving and fixing of the studio. So up went the shelves on the stairwell. This will give you an idea of the books in studio.

And here are only the books on manuscripts, palaeography, 16th – 19th century scripts and catalogues of manuscripts on sale at Sothebys, Christies and Maggs Bros. I did this for ease of access for research. And this is what the stairway looked like in the end

I had to clean the carpet too!

Came in on the weekend as Alistair was in Derbyshire – and went crazy tidying up the myriad of pens in the studio as well. A few weeks ago, Ali picked up 4 CD Racks and this is what I did with one of them.

There was other work on as well but the tidying up of the studio was what really made my week!

Short Week

We had a short week imposed on us by the lovely people at London Underground. They were striking from Tuesday evening till Wednesday evening. The last time this happened, last month, it took me almost 2 hours to do a journey that normally takes 20 minutes. And I mean 2 hours to get to the studio and then 2 hours to get back home. So I thought, as there is enough work to do on the copy for the website, think about the direction of the stationery business, working on the hieroglyphs book, (you get the picture) that it would make more sense to shut the studio on the Wednesday. This also meant leaving early on the Tuesday to avoid the rush as the strike was due to start at 7pm.

The thing about shutting for a day is you expect it to all run smoothly, like every other day and then the proverbial fan appears. London Business School called us in a panic asking for our assistance on filling in approximately 700 certificates. This is something we do every year for them, but this year there was a little bit of a mix up on the part of the print buyer. Clare called up and was so stressed I could not see how we could not not assist. She turned out to be good fun to deal with, despite the stressful situation. Unfortunately the late arrival of the certificates to the studio and the additional text that needed to be added, increased both the cost and the duration.

Sarah also came in with an envelope from Ruth at Ruth Kaye Design. Ruth is looking to get some writing on a kind of paper called ‘Skin’. So you can imagine what this feels like. I did some trials and left it overnight. The next day, the Tuesday, I came in and ran my finger over it, and it smudged. I did have some Dr PH Martins Spectralite Bronze and Copper, they both worked a charm but can only be used for formal script work. Usually it is the quick scripts that work all the time, but the problem here is the paper is coated and slick but the writing needs to be in a metallic colour.

Tuesday saw us rushing to leave but still had time for a visit from the wonderful Alyson Hurst from GFSmith. We have some plans on the table which I will talk about as they come closer to fruition. They are VERY exciting.

Sarah also reminded me that I needed to handwrite a letter to be copied and posted out to people who contacted us through Brides Magazine. I wrote the letter out and decided to put Sarah’s name on the bottom as she is the one who would have to deal with them in the end.

I thought it might be better if she didn’t have to sign all of them. And since the recipients would need to know who to ask for, writing her name out clearly was a better option.

Once they copies are made I will write the names in, still debating whether I should address the envelopes to correspond with the writing on the letter. Will decide when Sarah is back!

I work up on Wednesday and checked the email. We work off a Microsoft Exchange Server and the laptop at home is configured to the server so I can work from home. We also have Go To My PC so I can log in from anywhere in the world and check email (if the main studio PC is on!). Not sure if that is a good thing or not. I had about 10 urgent things to deal with, arrived via both email and phone calls to the mobile. It is always the way, no?

Rebecca at The Communication Store needed calligraphy on about 150 invitations and Lucy at Halpern also called to finalise a job for some last minute invitations for Tiffany’s. Needless to say, nothing could be sent to the studio as no one was in to receive it, so it all had to wait for Thursday morning delivery. Got some of what I needed to get done dealt with but no where nearly as much.

Thursday morning bright and early! Got in for 7:30 and started prepping for the day. Clare from LBS was bringing in some of the certificates for me to test the paper, a courier was on his way with all the certificates. Then things started to arrive. The invitations for Rebecca arrived (with a Versace logo on it) and Lucy’s invitations for Tiffanys came in immediately after. I had already stared to make a dent on LBS certificates. Then the box of stuff, birthday cards from Liberty arrived, and then Jess and Jo Malone called up for us to design a Pour Memoir card for them, as well as to talk about another invitation for the JM London – all to be done in our Small Capitals.

I had a wonderful surprise, Macki, who I used to work with at another event planning company called and is now at Family, dealing with a job for Annika at The Communication Store. I love reunions!

I did promise to document what happens when we start a job for stationery so here it is. The first thing we do is get the text. I then mix up some Process Black. This is a very dense black with wonderful contrast capacity. Problem is it takes very long to dry before we can put it on the scanner bed. Angelo scans it at 1200dpi, imports it into PhotoShop and does his magic putting it together. We have to find out size, weight and colour of card, if a gild or brushed edge is wanted and if envelopes are needed as well. We also need to check to see if the invitations will need names written on once they are printed, and if envelopes will need to be addressed as well. The reason for checking all of this, i.e. if calligraphy will be needed after the printing is completed, is to book it in so we know it needs to be done.

So this is what the initial thing looks like. I use Character High White Wove to write on as it is clean and crisp and does not create any unnecessary scanning problems. If I want something that is more artistic I would use my favourite Colourplan but it does have a tooth to it and make for more problematic scanning.

Once the ink is dry it is scanned and digitised. Working on an A5 template in PhotoShop, the text is then placed where we think it should go and we print if off to check the justification, centring and scale. Looking at it on the screen is no good, you need to see it for real. All of this I leave up to Angelo. Since his calligraphy practise is going so well, he has a much better understanding of letter spacing and placement. Far better than any graphic designer trying to use hand lettering for the same thing, except maybe Rachel at Mount Street!

The image then has to be sent to Mount Street with the necessary information for the printing and envelopes and then we play the waiting game – it usually takes about 4 working days to get an invitations litho (flat) printed. This is being done in black on oyster card, nice and simple! Will take a photo of the final product when it arrives next week as well as a mock up envelope, if we have to do one.

Once the Jo Malone text was completed and moved off the desk I had to do something known to gym bunnies as ‘SuperSetting’ which is where you work 2 or 3 different muscle groups at the same time. In this instance it was to do both the Tiffany invitations (on the left) and Versace invitations (on the right), in tandem. I started with the Versace ones but ran out of invites so while the bike was on its way with more I did the Tiffany ones. Once dry they were proof ready by Sarah and 2 mistakes were found on the Tiffany ones which needed correcting and then left to dry. With both jobs completed I went back to the LBS certificates.

Last week I promised to take some photos of envelopes done in decorative copperplate, these are only partial ones as they have friends addresses on them. I would never use this kind of over the top envelope work for clients as the cost would be too high. I would think somewhere in the region of £5.50 (10 words) plus something like a £5.00 supplement for the decoration and hatching. Hope you enjoy them.

The day ended with us saying Bon Voyage to Sarah as she heads off to her home in Sicily for a week, to clean up all that volcanic ash. It is always a slough when Sarah goes off as we all need to double up on work but makes us realise how important all the members of studio are. I always tell them there is no way I would be able to run this business without them. In fact, some people are happy when Sarah answers the phone and not me! Temperamental Artisans! Huh! Speaking of which, we had a call from Javier at By Appointment Only Design to do some placement envelopes and escort cards. To which was added Placecards and then table numbers, all this after the original order of stationery arrived so more had to be sent. Javier’s work will be done this week (8th of Nov) as the stationery for the last minute additions (placecards and table numbers) have yet to arrive.  

Friday saw Keiko and Angelo working away on separate things. Keiko on LBS certificates and Angelo on his caps, moving back to Italic with ‘The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog’ – every letter of the alphabet is in that sentence!

Friday was also the celebration of Divali, so took a card to the wonderful guys at Roti Joupa. They are from Trinidad as well and the food they make is great.

I stayed back late on Friday to continue with the tidying up of the studio.

Will post a special weekend blog as I know some visitors (other calligrpahers) are keen to see how the studio is coming along.

Thanks for reading. Now back to the LBS Certificates.

Quiet Week?

Once again I am sitting here, on a Saturday wondering what happened last week. Sarah and I decided that it might be best to sit down at the end of the day, or even half way through the day, and then at the end, and write up what has happened. I could not think of a better way to waste time! That said, the photo archive does assist in figuring out what happened. It is unfortunate we can’t tell you everything that goes on due to confidentiality issues but slowly it will come out.

This was a sad week and mummy was heading back to Trinidad on Tuesday the 26th, after staying with Alistair and myself for almost 3 months. Both Ali and I were sad, as was everyone else in the  studio, they all grew to love mummy. What is there not to like!

The studio still looked like a bombsite as we waited patiently for the expandable foam to seal most of the cracks that let air in the studio, cold air I might add – it is October! The Twinwall (polycarbonate sheeting for insulation) is on order. Sarah is in her coat as it is so cold upstairs.

Last week ended with a job to do for Karen at Olympic print which ran over unto Monday. I was surprised to see that the cards were so small but there was another problem and that was the issue of the text being thermographed. This creates a raised surface which catches the nib as you are writing and causes it to skip, splashing ink on the invitation! So do be carful of what you do where calligraphers need to write. No envelopes were needed.

The week started off with a call from Simon and Christina at the Berkeley, needing a certificate for a fantastic idea they are launching. They wanted a STUNNING presentation certificate, and I had the perfect idea in keeping in true Berkeley/Claridges/Connaught style. The basis was a ‘Certificate of Marriage’ we did for Mark Niemierko but with twist. I decided that since an image of the Connaught Bar Logo was needed on the top, encapsulating it would be useful and unlike the ‘Marriage Certificate’ I wanted a sunk plate border here. I extended the embossed border to include the ribbon as well and not to allow the ribbon to leave the sunk area, well, raised in this instance.

We also had some sketches to do for two clients, who can’t be name. Needless to say, one wanted to see a sketch when I had the time and the other needed it in the afternoon of that day. It always surprises me that people think you can solve their problems with design, in a few minutes, as though you are just sitting there waiting on them to call, when they have been grappling with it for days, and in some cases weeks. Calligraphy design is not magic guys! It is hard bloody work! Not to mention, the ink needs to dry before we can scan it! Sigh! So no images unfortunately but if they both come to fruition I will put them up. They were charged for the work. The today for today was also charged the rush rate! Same day is double the fee.

While all of this was going on two things came to conclusion.

I had a lovely chat with Charlotte and Nathalie at Dior as their job was coming to an end. As promised, here is the envelope in our slanted quick script, in white ink on GFSmith Colourplan Ebony. The white is a a monoline pen sent to us by Masayo of the Sakura Pen company. The pen shocked us! It is delicate to write with, great ink flow and brilliant coverage over the black. I can only thank Masayo. They also sent some gold and silver pens for us to test and, like the white, we simply could not anticipate how well they would work.

We used the silver on a job for Antonia at SpecificMedia, another lovely client. She really took the time to talk with us to understand some of the issues with her job. We were asked to use a formal script on the invitations in silver, but as the silver print was thermographed (this is where glue and powders are used to print in), I could not match the plasticity and shine with calligraphy paint (gouache) as gouache is flat and not shiny. We used an upright quick script for the envelopes, this script is based on our formal italic and is almost half the price of the formal hand making it great for addressing the envelopes (higher word count) and the formal script on the invitations. Colour of the week seemed to be black. No image due to confidentiality!

Jessica Carder, who we work with a lot, in her capacity in Communications at Jo Malone, is getting married. I must say, I am probably only a little less excited than Jess! I was so happy to be able to produce something stunning for her and this week the Dark Grey envelopes finally arrived. Her invitations were in our Loose Modern Script supported by our Small Caps. All the stationery was printed at Mount Street Printers. Rachel at Mount Street and I debated on processes.

Jess loves our white on dark grey and was set on that, but I am quite keen to counterchange our colour matching (dark ink on light paper vs. light ink on dark paper), but there is also a hierarchy of stationery one has to conscious of. We decided on to die stamp in white ink on dark grey colourplan (GFSmith), 700gsm card with a sunk plate border. I have tried really hard to capture the raised lettering as well as the sunk plate. I have had to smudge some the RSVP info though will repost once the event has passed.

Little hodgepodge, sorry about that, the black is for Dior and the grey if for Jess.

These are Jess’ envelopes and the Dior job getting packed up by Sarah.

One of our other jobs came. Will try to document when we have to do stationery ourselves a little better. I did the text for this job last week and it arrived this week. beautiful menus in our ‘Upright Copperplate’ with names to be written at the top and table names to be done. All done for Kate Cella wedding.

Because I was using a ruling pen for the table names, we thought it would be interesting to post them being made. Have not posted a vid on here so this is test for me as well. If not you can find them at youtube.com/user/PaulAntonioScribe 

Here are Kate’s Table-Name Cards.

We had a call from the team at Liberty wanting some birthday cards done, for the year! There are close to 3000 of them. It is funny how these things happen. Valeria came to see us, she brought the cards, great to write on, thankfully! We were even willing to post them off but the additional bit need to be sent would take too much time for us unfortunately. Not to mention would have increased the cost of the job. Spoke with Veronika and Preets as well and in the end came up with a best price. I do want to take some time here explaining about large jobs. The turn around for that week was also quite tight, today for tomorrow. I have just re-read that, we did not do 3000 of them for the next day! We are doing about 300 a month.

If we have the same text to handwrite, there are no real economies of scale, we don’t write faster, it is not like printing. It is a shame, but that is the way it is so reducing the price based on volume can only ever be a slight reduction.

Very itchy eyes! I did try not the mix up the Bleedproof White with the eye-drops.

This week also saw me teaching Keiko some copperplate script and assisting Angelo with his studies in Roman Caps. Angelo has been with me for about 16months now and is progressing beautifully. We had some issues with his caps and I really had to think long and hard as to how to help him along. I decided to get him started on Roman Capitals – specifically pen written ones based on Imperial Caps. As all calligraphers know, not an easy thing. He has really enjoyed it but more importantly I has really helped. He is now moving back to the italic armed with the knowledge of Imperial Capital proportioning.

I promised Keiko to develop her copperplate and so this is the beginning of it.

I have some extensive copperplate study sheets and looking at Keiko work on these made me think I need to consolidate them, there are 10 years of copperplate instruction there, making me think it is time to pull my finger out and get that book done! Just not enough time in the day.

Thursday started with the arrival of the Twinwall! Thank goodness. This meant spending Friday pulling apart the upstairs and turning it upside down. I generally try to do any changes on a Friday so there is no disruption to Sarah, as she is not in on Fridays, but it is back to normal in time for her to start work on Monday! Needless to say, she was looking forward to a warm studio, so was I. Heating is not cheap! I cannot tell you how much I appreciated Angelo’s assistance here. Talk about experiencing the true side of being an apprentice.

The Twinwall was HUGE! 3.5 x 1m. Getting it upstairs was a chore.

The curtains have been here for about 4 years and kept the studio warm, but it also kept the place dark. Needless to say they all came down, again. I had to put them back up as it was starting to get too cold between the foam drying and the twinwall arriving. Angelo started cleaning the glass

Once cleaned we prepared to start cutting the sheets to fit into the panes of glass.

Thursday also saw the arrival of out new fandangle A3 Cannon IX4000 printer!

There he is awaiting connecting and installing. Angelo simply could not wait to play with this.

Alistair came by, in his usual wonderful way, as he always keeps an eye out for things that would be useful in the studio. He saw 4 large CD racks and promptly brought them over. 3 are in place already.

The week ended with a trip to the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology. The curator, Dr Stephen Quirke, is a very good friend of mine and was having a book launch. The museum has been moved around and it is a fantastic space. The artefacts are accessible. If you get a chance please go!

Sarah, her wonderful husband, Michael and myself went along. Nice to have a day out. Something I have been planning for the team. The ‘Book of the Dead’ exhibition is opening soon at the British Museum so an outing will be planned! Who doesn’t love Egyptian Hieroglyphs! I also saw some work I have at the Petrie museum which I completely forgot about – this is a terrible image if it though. It is 2.5m tall. Below is Stephen and Jan Picton (introducing him, not that he needed introduction!)

I walked home in the pouring rain.

I came in on the weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, and did much tidying up, sweeping and mopping. The studio is almost there! Almost how I want it, well until we add something new to them mix. I made up a little table for our stationery department this desk will only be used for stationery we produce, shelves to store samples and will NOT be a desk to just rest things on, right"! The desk is on the right and now turned to fit the space. Will take some images of the studio as it is now and put it in the next blog.