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Cover Story
State of the art
Museums & Galleries continues to innovate within its comprehensive range of designs for cards, gifts and stationery, with art still very much at its core
Avisit to its stands at Spring Fair or PG Live showed Museums & Galleries (M&G) to be a vibrantly growing business – one of the independent UK industry’s brightest stars, and a leading producer of quality art cards and gift stationery, with an interesting and growing collection of fine art-based gift items.
Card ranges the company publishes stretch from the classic museum-quality core ranges, through standalone ranges for major museums such as the V&A, Tate Gallery, Natural History Museum and British Library, to ranges promoting younger independent artists (Mezzanine; Art of Print) and interesting contemporary designers (Matthew Williamson, Cressida Bell, Sarah Campbell, Catherine Rowe and Helen Ahpornsiri).
M&G’s phenomenally successful V&A ranges of cards celebrates the collections of the world’s finest museum of art, design and performance – exploring classic British Arts & Crafts designers such as William Morris, CFA Voysey, and Walter Crane; Art Nouveau stars including Alphonse Mucha; East Asian textiles and prints, and mid-century modern design. Card ranges come in a variety of popular formats and finishes.
Retailers can access two different M&G ranges featuring Natural History Museum content – the first a stylish and contemporary spin on the museum’s extraordinarily rich archival imagery, and the second a standalone range featuring award-winning photography from the museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition.
Together with this carefully curated array of art, design and heritage licences, M&G has developed its stationery and gift offer over the past 10 years into a truly impressive body of work. Customer service too has continually improved with the new warehouse in Corby - which M&G moved into during lockdown - delivering incredible gains over the last two years in particular.
Expanding portfolio
Museums & Galleries Ltd launched in the 1980s with the aim of bringing the gems of the world’s museums to beautifully made and produced cards and stationery for the high street. It remains true to this mission today, but over the years the company has expanded both its product portfolio and the variety of art it publishes, so today has an outstanding retail offer covering a wide spectrum from heritage fine art to contemporary fashion design, old masters to contemporary artists and illustrators, anonymous archival discoveries to the most prestigious of fine art museum brands.
The company’s core collection of greetings cards, branded Classics, is a heady mix of styles curated from a variety of sources. Every image is chosen for its quality and timeless style. The range is infinitely adaptable to the changing consumer moods, and M&G carefully balances some endearingly quirky designs against classics by the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, and LS Lowry. Asian art is a striking trend here, as well as cards aimed at masculine interests. Animals, florals and landscapes are hugely popular. Classics comes in a square format as well as a traditional rectangular format, all blank for the sender’s own message.
The next-own brand the company developed was The Illustrators; all square cards printed on textured board and originally featuring classic illustration from children’s books. Over time this range has blossomed into a showcase for iconic, slightly nostalgic, British character illustration – Peggy Fortnum’s classic Paddington Bear illustrations; Quentin Blake’s work for Roald Dahl’s books; Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came To Tea illustrations, and Anita Jeram’s illustrations for Guess How Much I Love You, among others. New additions are Jill Barklem’s gloriously detailed and muchcontemporary art strands loved Brambly Hedge illustrations, and Nick Butterworth’s fondly remembered Percy the Park Keeper and his friends. have quickly established themselves as retailer favourites: Mezzanine, and Art of Print
Contemporary art
M&G has continued to innovate with new own-brand ranges, and in recent years has launched two contemporary art strands, which have quickly established themselves as retailer favourites: Mezzanine, and Art of Print.
Art of Print is a collection of contemporary printmaking across all disciplines, printed on textured board and rectangular in format. Wildlife and especially birds are very strong in this range, but landscapes also feature. Mezzanine focuses on bright, bold and refreshing modern art sourced fresh from contemporary galleries, agencies, and direct from artists. Printed on high-quality textured art board, all cards are square with white borders.
Commercial appeal
Strongly individual artists with powerful stories to tell and strong commercial appeal are given their own personal ranges: from Alison Fennel’s charming animal watercolours (Alison’s Ark) to veteran illustrator Lucy Grossmith’s atmospheric, lushly coloured and finely detailed Coast and Country, M&G aims to feature each individual artist’s unique strengths.
Developed over the past couple of years have been new ranges showcasing the unique style of Liberty Prize-winning designer Catherine Rowe and Helen Ahpornsiri’s intricate wildflower collages (Wild Press).
While all the above is richly diverse in itself, M&G today is possibly best known for its prestigious branded ranges – starting with the national collections based in London. M&G has worked with both the V&A and the British Library since its inception as a publisher, and today both museums have licensed branded card, stationery and gift collections in M&G’s portfolio. The V&A is the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance, and M&G’s V&A greeting cards offer the ultimate range of decorative art and design. Drawing from wallpaper patterns, textiles and exquisite laquerwork, the collection comes in multiple formats, including a luxury range featuring gold-foil stamp detail and embossing.
Striking imagery
The British Museum offers a world of striking imagery, which M&G publishes on gift packaging, stationery, journals and gifts. M&G’s Tate range explores this worldfamous gallery’s collection of British art from the 16th century to the present, along with international modern and contemporary art. M&G’s art studio collaborated with the Natural History Museum to develop a design-led and inspired NHM range, and has also published imagery from BBC Earth, and Transport for London classic posters.
An important and growing interest is in fashion design – M&G launched star designer Matthew Williamson’s first dazzling stationery collection five years ago, and this hugely successful range has been joined by collections by such luminaries as Cressida Bell, Catherine Rowe and Sarah Campbell. Each designer has their own utterly distinctive style and approach, which M&G translates with sensitivity and aplomb to cards and stationery products.
