true-ish tales of stationery icons
TEXT AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY kïa hing fay
pink-and-blue eraser
Hello pink-and-blue eraser. May I ask you a personal question? Why are you so iconic? And why the two tones? You look cool and everything, but you are not very good at your job.
Before the rubber eraser, people just used their sandwiches to remove pencil marks. Yup: breadcrumbs were just rolled around on paper, making everything a little greasy. One day in 1770 an English engineer reached for his sandwich while correcting his calculations and grabbed a piece of natural rubber from his desk instead. Realizing that the rubber was far more effective than his breadcrumbs, he began selling them as part of his side hustle.
It was not until much later that the pink-andblue eraser made its way into schools around the world. The pink side was created by adding pink volcanic pumice to the rubber, to make it more abrasive. The blue side is a little more controversial. I’m not sure if it was our parents who lied to us or if it was school folklore, but the blue side is not meant for erasing ink! No! Which would explain why it was so very terrible at rubbing out my blue Bic!
It was, in fact, designed to remove pencil from heavy-stock papers, like those in sketchbooks. I mean, really? Why weren’t we told?
stapler
Hear ye, hear ye. Let it be known that by royal decree, the stapler has been bestowed the highest order of the stationery cupboard.
The staple was constructed for King Louis XV, a.k.a. Marie Antoinette’s father-in-law. Within the French royal court, all paperwork was bound together with needle and thread. Of course, this was totally fine until someone forgot to add page 32 and the whole thing needed to be unstitched and amended. It was such a bother, which did not go unnoticed by the king. Louis insisted that a solution be found—a very expensive, glittery solution. The royal jewellers took on the brief with gusto and forged the first individual staples out of solid gold. The flamboyant king liked the idea but demanded even more dazzle to his documents. And so, the newly invented paper fasteners were sprinkled with gemstones of every colour imaginable.
Joli papier!
All hail the king and his stationery bling!
pencil sharpener
Hello pencil sharpener. Can I be perfectly blunt? You have a very dull backstory.
Admittedly, you have been excellent at saving us all time (and with your whittling skills) for the past century and a half. However, being designed by a French mathematician and manufactured by an American does not exactly make for an amusing anecdote. All records indicate that you are something of a stationery wallflower.
If that is really true, how do you explain your rather saucy nom-de-plume? Did office workers really refer to you as Dick’s Perfect Pointer, the Love Sharpener and the Climax? Surely it must be a case of mistaken identity, or more likely, misguided marketing from years gone by.
Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?
Kïa Hing Fay is an illustrator, storyteller, fact finder and design enthusiast based in Brisbane, Australia. After graduating with an MA in museum studies in the UK she spent many years working with quite nice national art collections. While the curators were deciphering the allegories of Old Master paintings, Kïa was asking big questions, like “Why was camel pee good for making paint?” or “When did dogs start wearing clothes?” Kïa has endless enthusiasm for nonfiction illustration, cold mountain air and Boggle. paperhang.com @paperhang
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paper clip
Goodness me, paper clip. How is it that you never seem to age? I mean, look at you. You are sporting the same shiny demeanour and the same flexible appendage as the day you were first manufactured. Other novelty-shaped whipper-snappers have crept into our paper clip trays over the years, but we have always pledged allegiance to your classic steely looks and reliability. And, as a side note, you keep excellent company. Cut from the same 19th-century cloth (or rather low-cost industrial steel) as the safety pin and the coat hanger, your practical pedigree is indisputable.
This tiny office helper has been firmly clasping documents together since the late 1800s. It was produced by the GEM Manufacturing Company and promoted as an alternative to pinning pages together or binding them up with dreaded red tape. Brilliantly simple, the GEM clip required just four inches of wire and three oval bends to ensure “no mutilation of papers” (as declared in an advert from 1893).
Can you think of a more infinitely useful and friendly companion? During the Second World War, Norwegians wore the paper clip on their lapels as a protest of German occupation. It was a silent symbol for “sticking together.” Nowadays, the paper clip dutifully serves to pick our locks, pop out SIM cards and stand in for broken zipper tags. In 2005, a guy named Kyle traded a red paper clip for a fish-shaped pen. Thirteen barters later, he was the proud owner of a farmhouse in Saskatchewan!
The MoMA in New York declared it a “humble masterpiece,” and the entire Swedish nation calls it a “gem.” Who are we to disagree?
mechanical pencil
Ahoy there, mechanical pencil. I often think of you as sunken treasure, buried amongst my stationery stash. You are a glint of hope in the sea of broken pencils and boring pens. But trawling through your design ancestry has been quite a murky adventure.
The mechanical pencil was something of an orphan, of unknown parentage. As was often the case, the youngster was forced to toil for the British Navy. Internally mechanized and eternally pointy, the sailors came to depend on it wholeheartedly. As the years passed, the mechanical pencil was assigned to the HMS Pandora, the 16th-century warship that was ordered to scour the seas for the mutineers of the ill-fated Bounty
Alas, the story takes a terrible dive, as the ship, along with 89 of her crew and 10 mutineers, met a watery grave on the Great Barrier Reef. The human toll was well documented; however, being of low rank, history books did not account for the fate of the mechanical pencil.
Thanks to a filmmaker and a squad of scientists in Speedos, the shipwreck was discovered and its contents resurfaced almost 200 years later. And the happy ending? Our hero was hailed as the oldest-known mechanical pencil in the world and is now a prized treasure of the Queensland Museum in Australia. Mechanical pencil, we salute you.
highlighter pen
Oh hey, highlighter pen! I didn’t see you there. I am totally joking—your flamboyant fluorescence is impossible to ignore! I have always wondered how a relentless attention seeker such as yourself could be permanently charming. Tell me, what’s your magic touch?
The highlighter pen has been illuminating our manuscripts since 1963. But the story really starts during the Great Depression, when the world was grey. Two teen brothers, Bob and Joe Switzer, were looking to add a bit of colour and magic to their lives. Inspired by a youthful curiosity for luminescence, the boys began poking about in their parents’ pharmacy to discover what might glow under a black light. All sorts of things, as it turns out—including petroleum jelly, crushed vitamins and a few illicit drugs.
With lofty goals of winning a magic competition, they grabbed their glowing ingredients and set to work creating the first-ever fluorescent ink. The brothers painted their costumes, and then, in a darkened room under UV light, dazzled the judges with their magical, detachable body parts.
The illusion won first place in the Oakland Magic Convention of 1934, but also sparked a full-fledged fluoro franchise. The Switzer brothers quickly established the iconic Day-Glo Color Corp. and found that everything they touched turned to neon. At first it was movie posters, then military equipment, safety clothing and even an entire Pop Art movement (thank you Andy Warhol!).
However, all of these paled in comparison to the innovation of our stationery stalwart, the HiLiter pen. Hypnotized by its highlights, people started to pay closer attention to their dreary textbooks and office memos. And therein lies the magic, ladies and gentlemen. This pen actually helps us to remember stuff! It turns out that the secret to brightening our books, as well as our brains, is very simple. Just put a nip of eyewash solution in a felt-tip pen, and hey presto! Stationery sorcery.
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STORY AND CALLIGRAPHY BY joy vanides deneen TOGETHER
take care: this article contains stories of illness, loss of a child, grief and other emotional topics.
creativity and hardship, intertwined
Please
Across the centuries, there are extraordinary examples of art born out of hardship, from the ancient Egyptian Papyrus of Ani to surrealist paintings by Frida Kahlo and albums from bands like Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails. But far outnumbering the famous artists, are the rest of us: legions of individual people searching for ways to cope, process and heal. What is it about the human spirit that so often turns to creativity, to render pain into something tangible?
Author
Megan Devine writes that “Creating something good out of loss is not a trade, and it’s not a cure. Pain is not redeemed by art. And yet, we make art anyway. The truth is, pain, like love, needs expression.”
Art and storytelling have long been an integral part of life, both personally and professionally. Yet curiously, during the darkest passage of my life, my days felt devoid of anything resembling creativity. In 2019, my first and only child had to be delivered prematurely due to my severe preeclampsia. He was swiftly transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), due to a rare congenital anomaly that would require multiple surgeries. While separated from him in my own hospital room, I remember speaking with one of his nurses over the phone. She recommended that I write in a journal; that many moms find it helpful. But as days turned into weeks, I found myself in a state of tunnel vision, brushing off any suggestions about self-care. I was trying to figure out how to be a mother to a tiny, fragile human who was tethered to monitors and machines. I was overwhelmed by the incessant beeping, the buzz of continuous suction, the alerts of completed feeds, the countless respiratory episodes and the flow of medical professionals in and out of his room. My inner artist emerged for brief moments, like when singing with the music therapist or calligraphing my son’s name with large flourishes on his care board. I was focused on my child, his care and keeping my own panic attacks at bay. After six months, my sweet boy was finally discharged after a ground-breaking surgery, but he still faced a long series of interventions. When we had periods of stability, I found myself falling apart at the most inexplicable moments. And gradually, I felt creative impulses quietly sparking up to the surface again.
In early 2023, I was drawn to a project I had learned about in the early days of the pandemic. Created by author, journalist and cancer survivor Suleika Jaouad, The Isolation Journals is an artist-led journaling community, founded on the idea that “life’s interruptions are invitations to deepen our creative practice.” I was struck by how many people in the community were coming from places of personal hardship, and I was moved by their manifesto, which reads in part: “I reach for the page like I reach for prayer: to plead, to confess,
RESOURCES
The Isolation Journals
Suleika Jaouad, author of the bestselling memoir
Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted, founded The Isolation Journals in the spring of 2020 while quarantining in her parent’s attic. “I was no stranger to isolation,” she writes. “I spent much of my twenties in treatment for leukemia, unable to travel, eat out, see friends, even take a walk. Suddenly isolation was back—this time on a global scale. Feeling unmoored and uninspired, I decided to reimagine what a journal could be.” Yearning for creative connection, she asked her favourite writers and artists to share essays and journaling prompts. These free prompts were sent out each week, and the project blossomed into a warm and vibrant creative community. “Here, we learn how to use creativity as a tool for survival,” she writes. “Here, small acts of creativity accrue into something much bigger. Here, stories of vulnerability become stories of resilience and strength, and they unite us as a community.”
Subscribers have access to a deep archive of journal prompts, essays, studio visits and podcasts, including a poignant “Creative Heart-to-Heart” between Jaouad and her husband, Jon Batiste, about joy and sadness as creative practice. Batiste shares that “joy is nuanced just as much as hardship… when you’re in joy, many times, it’s anchored by the hardship we came out of. You have this realization at all times that it’s all connected. Everything is everything.”
theisolationjournals.substack.com
Noted
Each week, Jillian Hess takes her newsletter subscribers inside the pages of notebooks and journals of a notable note-taker, sharing archival photos and “meditations on what I’ve learned from their notes.” To see inside Frida Kahlo’s art journals, Queen Victoria’s books of mourning, Kurt Cobain’s spiral notebooks and more, visit: jillianhess.substack.com
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Ingredients for Success
Cynthia Oswald PHOENIXVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA, USA
While creating my last collection, I experienced a creative breakthrough by combining processes that truly excite me: problem solving, research, design thinking and self-trust. When all of these elements were at play, I felt truly passionate about my work.
The way it started was by creating a problem: what pieces of art would I like to have above my own dresser? Then I started researching subject matter that interested me, thinking about a design that would give the feeling of what I was trying to achieve, and leaning into my own instincts.
By combining these processes with my passion for nature, I was able to get really excited by the process and stay engaged through the messy middle. I immersed myself in research and design thinking, which allowed me to approach the subject matter in a new and innovative way. Moreover, by trusting my own creative instincts, I was able to take risks and push boundaries in my work. Overall, my creative breakthrough resulted from my ability to combine various processes that excited me, along with my passion for the subject matter. Doing so enabled me to create Wild Garden, a collection that not only showcased my creativity but also conveyed a deeper message about being intentional with our time and accepting our natural tendencies.
cynthiaoswald.com
@cynthiaoswalddesign
Thanks, Mom
Annette Webb
MOUNT DORA, FLORIDA, USA
I was laid off from my graphic design job when the inhouse agency was dissolved. It was time to downsize; we sold our home of 20 years, where we had raised our three now grown children. Soon after, my mother passed away at 96. I was her caretaker and she was a huge part of the family. My mother left a very small insurance policy. Paying bills was foremost, but I felt I needed to do something to honour her. She was a fiercely independent NYC woman and I could hear her saying, “Do something for yourself!”
This is how I found my way back to illustration.
As a child, I was always drawing. My older siblings were very talented artists, but I held my own and drew my colourful marker drawings, with stories and characters to go along. My degree led me to a 35-year graphic design career. I was successful, I suppose.
As an art director, I hired many talented and wellknown illustrators and photographers, and won several awards in magazine design. I paid the bills. I had a nice house. My kids went to college. But, I never felt fulfilled. I really wanted to draw.
Then I saw an ad for Make Art That Sells. It was kismet. Lilla Rogers was exactly the person I needed to guide me. My creativity exploded! I was drawing, painting and trying new mediums; I bought an iPad and learned to use Procreate. My style bounced from watercolours and ink to fully digital. I cried through paintings and laughed through drawings, all while sorting through my mom’s possessions. The childhood drawings my mother saved reminded me of how supportive she had been—not only of my creativity but of my life as a career woman.
I hope she knows she led the way.
annettewebbart.com
@annettewebb_illo
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A Luscious New Support
Anne Gibson BEND, OREGON, USA
My partner and I spent the hottest days of last summer at PLAYA Summer Lake in Oregon, on the western edge of the Great Basin. We entered the residency as writer and artist, respectively. The first evening, a powerful dust storm blew up, obliterating all but an eerie brown shadow of our stunning view. Hours later we were treated to a dazzling light show, much as wildfire ash makes for splendid sunsets.
Having long worked in the smaller end of a multi-function room at home, it was a delight to walk into my own 10-by-20-foot studio and close the door. My painting style incorporates acrylic paint thinned with medium until translucent and layered to achieve depth of colour. I often scrape into the layers to add detail and mark-making. The supports I use for painting, like paper, stretched canvas and wood, each offer unique and satisfying textures and resistance to whatever tool I use: palette knife, spatula, a scrap of matte board or brush. But I had never had the freeing experience of stapling canvas directly to the wall. And certainly not to an irregular, bumpy wall like those of Homasote panels. The soft texture of the wall became embedded in the painting’s surface from the very first layer of gesso. I enjoyed painting on Homasote so much, we immediately hung some in my studio back home.
In addition to finishing a large canyon painting for an October solo show, I began four more paintings inspired by our dazzling first night. I challenged myself to work directly from quick studies rather than photos. This made them more abstract than my usual work: more about how colour evokes light, the beauty of the pigments and how the materials interacted against that soft wall. But they are still about how place feels.
annegibsonartanddesign.com
@annepgibson
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Suffering Births Beauty
Leslie Kubica
LITTLE FALLS, NEW YORK, USA
I’ve always thought that beginnings were romantic; the beginning of movies, novels, songs, relationships, the first bite of a Sour Patch Kid… all pure magic. I was also told that I was a late bloomer. I always thought this was a negative part of me, but now, with the perspective that time always provides, I see that this defining characteristic, in fact, allowed for a perfectly timed breakthrough.
The beginning was a choice. I was only 15 and deciding my entire future—would I be preparing for a visual art program or a music program? This tore my soul into two, and, with very little adult guidance and a flip of a coin, I settled on music school. Two degrees in flute performance, studies in education and 23 years later, I was now a full-time elementary music teacher. Everyone around me considered my career a success, but I always felt like something was missing. It remained a mystery until, in 2017, my life turned upside down.
I was in a car accident on the way to work one snowy morning, and then another one on the way home one month later. I was home from work for five months to heal. Stuck at home, with nothing to do but hurt and suffer, I found some art supplies and began to make a different kind of art. I started small with little ink and watercolour drawings, and my soul soared! Making art every day was an intuitive, desperate practice. It started to spread as a healing balm throughout my body and mind, pulling me away from the darkest days and allowing me to process what happened. Soon, I began my own illustration business and my soul soared even higher!
Six years later, after continuing to suffer from unrelenting PTSD attacks, I made a most important decision out of sheer selfpreservation: I enrolled in school for the visual arts, which, it turns out, is what my soul had yearned for all along. I finally felt like I had found my creative home. Completing a certification in mere months, I found a new job teaching art to high school students. I hold so much gratitude for my own courageousness and self-preservation. I know now that I can do hard things, with the help of my loved ones, and that beauty can be birthed by suffering.
@lesliekubicaillustration
Sustainable Quilting Breakthrough!
Sheri Marshall
EDDYVILLE, KENTUCKY, USA
After seeing a video on worldwide waste, specifically from clothing and fibres, I decided to dive into sustainable, repurposed and upcycled quilting. It was then that I had a number of creative breakthroughs that were very exciting, meaningful and helpful to the environment. My quest started with a sketchbook of designs, a box of repurposed fibres, purchases from a local secondhand store and my own stash of unused tablecloths and clothing. These quilts can be used and enjoyed for years to come, saving seven to eight cotton shirts per quilt from ending up in the landfill. Shirts can be made into memory quilts or upcyled fabric can be used for low-cost design exploration, charity work, picnic blankets and kennel quilts for shelters. I am doing my small part to cut down on environmental waste. All quilters have an opportunity to do the same.
waxingpinkmoon.com
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Embracing Authenticity
Alice Quartly
SOMERFIELD, NEW ZEALAND
Recently, I found myself poring over my portfolio of surface pattern designs, attempting to pinpoint my signature style—an endeavour that many designers can likely relate to. What I discovered in this process was a surprising duality in my work. On one hand, there were the “safe” designs—those that I thought would appeal to a wider audience. These pieces, while satisfactory upon completion, quickly lost their allure for me. On the other hand, I had a small collection of more abstract, freeform designs that truly ignited my passion during their creation. I had initially assumed these designs would be less well received, but they were the ones that felt most authentic to me.
These abstract pieces saw me engaging more with hand tools—pens, pencils, paint and even torn cardboard as brushes— rather than relying heavily on digital manipulation. The result? Designs that not only stood the test of time in my own eyes but actually grew on me.
So, I decided to share these more personal designs, regardless of potential criticism or how they might clash with my existing social media aesthetic. It’s not like my world would stop turning, right? To my delight, these creations garnered far more attention and praise than anything I had done previously.
This experience taught me the importance of embracing my true artistic voice. In this moment of vulnerability and authenticity, I had found my way back to why I fell in love with the process of designing in the first place: self-expression.
alice-q.com
@aliceq_quartlypatterns
Dive Deep
Annie Catura GOLDEN, COLORADO, USA
Dear Artist’s Pages, Dyslexia Words, Why do my thoughts scramble… When some write poetry?
Barely discernible when streaming, Messy and unfettered.
A battle
My inner critic
Especially loud and annoying today.
Too many negatives, Exhausted and beat down.
If this is the artist’s path, I must do more yoga regularly, And quiet the rain of words.
Feeling like a brawl.
“You paint like a child!”
A child’s drawing?
This my inner critic’s attack.
Unknown beliefs about what a child should… Should be good at. What a child should focus on.
This inner struggle, This not knowing, This frustration This Wanting to do something, to be somebody.
“No! You are just a girl. You will never make it as an artist.”
A middle-age race to believe in myself: The artist.
The one who furthers society.
The one who challenges us to move beyond. To believe further and to dig deeper, to deep dive.
The one who challenges us to challenge…
Challenge the status quo.
Feel the fear and go anyway.
Feel the doubt
Challenge those beliefs. Be scrappy Fly!
Soar beyond the paralysis. Thoughts, Words, Part of the process. I am unable to ignore They need to be included. I must face them.
The fear, Where will I land?
Yet we fly anyway. Thankful for the courage to leap.
And then… There’s the open water. The fear of the unknown. I dive…
Feel the magic. Flight of freedom. Waters above the depths.
annieimogene.com
@annie_out_west
Creating Playful Space
Louise van der Merwe
SAUDI ARABIA
I am grateful for the chance to create every day. My most recent breakthrough happened while practising cutting organic shapes with my jewellery saw. I wasn’t working on anything specific, my aim was to simply practise cutting. As I fell into a rhythm, I relaxed and just enjoyed being present in the moment. I picked up the pieces and started playing around with configuring them. Then, I had my breakthrough and knew exactly what to do. I made a quick sketch and added dimensions to the metal, after enamelling the pieces and adding some marks.
Usually, when I have a breakthrough like this, it carries over into other mediums as well. For example, I painted a panel that had been calling my name for a while and even baked a delicious babka treat while waiting for the paint to dry. It was such a fulfilling moment to enjoy a cup of tea and my freshly baked treat while looking back on the last couple of days I spent creating. It’s important to keep showing up and practising, even if it’s just to play. These moments often lead to magic.
louisevandermerwe.com
@louisevandermerwedesign
Breakthroughs
Bev Ellis SURREY, BC, CANADA
I was in the middle of a fulltime art teaching schedule and juggling our busy household of five when I received a call from a gallery curator offering me a solo show in three months. There is nothing like a deadline to facilitate an artistic breakthrough! The timing was perfectly imperfect—I had no margin in my life and I was starving my inner artist.
With the challenge to unite printmaking and ceramics into a cohesive exhibit, I looked through sketches I’d drawn recently, noticing they were all trees. I began experimenting with clays, glazes and methods including throwing, handbuilding and carving to sculpt trees. I was drawn to creating birch trees and I settled on two main clay bodies. Meanwhile, with printmaking, I was limited by my equipment. I looked into different printmaking facilities. With the cost of printmaking studios being outside my budget, I began making linocuts, knowing I could print them at home without a press. I also started to explore monotype printmaking and discovered joy in that process. I framed about 65 linocut and monotype prints for my exhibit and made many sculptures, choosing about 30 for the exhibit. The result of the show was more than a large body of work I was proud of—it led me to the sculptures that I create now, and into a full-time art career. Working towards a challenging goal opened the windows of my creative life. This breakthrough taught me that giving myself a grand vision was the key to unlocking the chains that bound my artistic aspirations.
bevellis.com
@bevellisfineart
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Reminiscence of the Past
Hannah Moren
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
For me, when I think of “whimsy” I often think of fairy tales, which brings me back to memories of my childhood. It takes me to a world of make-believe and fantasy, reminding me of the stories that once captivated my imagination. Whether it was my favourite books or animated TV shows, those tales hold a special place in my heart. Through my artwork I hope to reignite the same childlike curiosity and fascination, as well as bring that sense of nostalgia for times past.
hannahmoren.com
@hannah_moren
House on a Sea
Milena Zdravkova
LONDON, UK
How wonderful it would be if our happy, imaginary world became a reality! If we could experience it, hear it, smell its euphoric scent, feel the warmth and joy… My artwork “House on a Sea” represents this wonderful feeling of being curious, excited, loved and loving. This feeling I would call whimsy.
milenazdravkova.com
@milenazdravkova
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Watercolour playing
Monica Kane
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, USA
I love watercolour and sometimes I like to use my imagination to make pop-up cards and dimensional objects with my art. I made some ceramic flower vases and painted them, to see if what I painted would take on another dimension. I love exploring new possibilities and having fun with it. Sometimes I don’t want to stop playing and find myself lost for hours on a project and have to force myself to stop! Whimsy is fun, playful and happy. To me it is a stage where the mind plays with reality and I get lost in a place that nobody has explored. It is where the inner child in me is set free and can run and never be worried, and can feel safe and happy wherever she is.
monicakanedesign.com
@monica.kane.design
Enchanted Garden
Charlene Landry
NEWPORT BEACH, CA, USA
To me, whimsy means fun, playful, joyous, optimistic, bright, happy, curious, unpredictable, fanciful, spontaneous, unexpected, intuitive and free. It’s where intuition, imagination, ideals and dreams seamlessly blend. There is a certain innocence, purity and excitement of possibilities within my spirit that comes to mind. It reminds me of when I was a kid and there was a fearlessness to my creativity and within my little box of crayons and blank pieces of papers splayed out in front of me. Creating something with whimsy gets me out of my head a little bit, because sometimes I have allowed fear and anxiety to take the wheel.
rabbitcatstudio.com
@rabbitcatstudio
Neighbourhood Garden
Jeanine Robb
FOLSOM, CALIFORNIA, USA
This piece depicts a garden full of colourful flowers fronting a row of houses where a bird, butterfly and bee flutter about. The collaged pieces are enhanced with a variety of pattern and lots of colour, using acrylic paint pens. Whimsy, to me, is the expression of lots of fanciful patterning and bright colour combinations, exuding elements of fun, playfulness and joyfulness. It definitely brings a smile to your face.
@jrobbarts
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Joy
Kelley Dillon
SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, USA
To me whimsy is a sense of flow, inspiration, playfulness and curated chaos. It is the feeling I get when I create art, and the feeling I hope my artwork emits.
kelleydillon.com
@kelleydillon
Magical Meadow
Leah Keggi
ATHENS, GEORGIA, USA
Whimsy is a little touch of magic—it feels so close to reality that you can put yourself into the piece of art, but it also feels a little dreamy and out of reach!
leahkeggi.com
@coastlstudio
Go Bananas—Joyfully!
Victoria Beerman
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, USA
Whimsy is my way of dancing lightly in my life. It’s a way of seeing the magic in the everyday—and creating it, too—both in my art practice and in my wardrobe choices. My style has always been playful. If it makes me happy and feel joyfully alive, I wear it! I thrill when I spot such whimsy in others, too. I spied a man on my lunch hour in grey business attire yet sporting a royal blue turban, ruby red socks and shimmering gold sneakers. He made my day! I love making others smile as well. I designed two banana-themed surface patterns and had dresses made of each. They lift my spirits, and I always get a delighted reaction from passersby.
victoriabdesign.com
@victoriabdesign
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Forbidden Whimsy
Sara Swink
WEST LINN, OREGON, USA
A university ceramics teacher once told me, “We don’t do whimsical here,” so whimsy has taken on a dual connotation for me. When people describe my work as whimsical, which they very often do, it causes me to pause for a moment. I know what they mean. It’s considered a compliment. My ceramics are fun, playful, imaginative and sometimes humorous. But they aren’t created on a whim—anything but! They most often have deep personal meaning that has been brought forth through a process involving collage, sketching, contemplation and exploration in clay, but which may not be apparent to the viewer at first glance. I have come to enjoy the less obvious narratives that artworks can harbour, and I like the idea that I’m doing something that is true to myself and perhaps a little forbidden. saraswink.com @sara.swink.ceramics
Seaside Houses
Chelsea Sia
LONDON, UK
To me, being whimsical is making spaces and homes of the most unlikely things, and being beholden to the surprises that these may bring. In Seaside Houses, I have created lots of little houses gently perched atop rocks, in a playful imagining of life.
afterprovidence.com
@afterprovidence
Ephemeral Critters
Marilyn Green
SEA RANCH, CALIFORNIA, USA
I make these temporary critters on a beach I visit often. They are constructed with items I find on the beach and are intended for others to find and enjoy. To me, whimsy means magical, ephemeral, fun, silly and, well, whimsical.
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design. I was waitressing and I thought, ‘I’m going to quit this job if I can go home and figure out how to put a zipper into a bag.” So, she went home and figured it out. Later she took a small collection of purses she had made from old curtains and showed them to one of the organizers of a local market. Needless to say, they were fascinated—not only by the purses themselves but by the fact that they were handmade from discarded materials.
After that, Rebecca began displaying her wares in other markets, travelling the country and then the world, spending some time in New Zealand selling at a Saturday farmer’s market. “I sewed in a farmer’s field,” she recalls with a laugh. “Plugged into a little outlet, living in an orange caravan in New Zealand in my early twenties, and just kept going. It just kept getting better and better every year. I kept reaching for new horizons and expanding my ideas, and it just kept coming naturally in a way that was almost chaotic because there was no organization or plan or business of any kind.”
Today, from a cozy studio in Toronto’s vibrant Art and Design District, the small but mighty Honeybea team with Rebecca at the helm releases a couple of smallbatch collections each month: one-of-a-kind pieces, each designed creatively and made from thoughtfully rescued, hand-picked heirloom textiles, sewn with painstaking artistry and impeccable tailoring. “If you could imagine the pieces as paintings—the placement of things is very intentional on the flow through the design,” explains Rebecca, “like a painting.”
And like works of art, Honeybea’s pieces are meant to be discovered, admired and simply adored. Patches of vibrant colour and unconventional combinations of patterns are grounded by basic elements such as white linen, countryside florals and denim. Weathered elements that just feel like home are harmoniously paired together through a shared language whispered into Rebecca’s ear. “When I pull the textiles from various corners of the studio and put them across the cutting table to pair them, to cut them, to trim around things and piece them together, there’s some sort of language happening between them,” she explains. “They are in conversation with each other and with me, and they decide if they want to be near each other or not. It’s colour, but there’s more than that: there’s a life force that works together and when I let them go after that, I’m sharing something more than a piece of clothing.”
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Rebecca works intuitively when selecting a piece to bring into her studio, and she believes that there is a spirit-guided process that puts the textiles in her path. “They come from all over,” she says. “They could have been a million miles away and somehow have travelled through coincidences—although I don’t believe in coincidences. So it’s a very faithful and spiritual process. I have had experiences when I’d be rummaging through this big surplus of textiles and I had checked everywhere and then something would pull me in a different direction, and an edge of a quilt would fall down and show me its other side, because from the top it didn’t look like anything. There is an energy in them I feel deeply connected to, almost like I am a conduit for their continued lifecycle.”
Designing and crafting each piece requires talent and imagination but is also an exercise in surrendering control and letting the textiles lead the way during the creative process. “It’s really incredible how these spirit guides, as I call them, will give me what I need,” she muses. “It all goes back to the beginning. It’s those threads that are pulled through that have come from within someone’s heart and life. They are not just things, they are not just dead objects, they are infused. The textiles lead, and they also inspire challenges because I’m not just using yards of whatever I desire—I’m having to get really creative and innovative with blocking pieces together and patchworking.”
While Rebecca cherishes all textiles, she admits she has a soft spot for the emotional stories found within a quilt and the special connections made over embroidered table linens. “I love the thought of people gathering for food and drink and good conversation, and the
life that would have been going on around the table,” she says. After feeling such a strong connection while working on her one-of-a kind pieces, it is not always easy for her to say goodbye to them, especially the ones that she worked the hardest on, but she is always excited to release her collections back into the world and see how they make her clients happy and inspire them.
Owners of Honeybea’s creations are also inspired to appreciate the durability of old materials and the way they stand the test of time. A big part of what Honeybea stands for is encouraging their customers to embrace visible mending and taking the time to sit down to mend as a ritual for winding down. “Our world doesn’t operate like that anymore,” says Rebecca, “where you have a basket beside the fireplace where you are going to fix the kids’ jeans and you are going to fix different things. I guess it depends where you live but the world has completely changed, so taking time to mend needs to be intentional and a practice to be introduced into your life.”
When asked how her work is a reflection of herself, Rebecca pauses for a moment and then responds thoughtfully: “I am learning more and more every day to be completely unbridled in expressing my whole heart through my work, and it’s made things so much easier. I work very intuitively. If it makes my heart sing, we are doing it; if I have to fight to start a song in my heart, we are not doing it. I really embrace letting it be entirely me.” She cannot conceal the fun she has in putting all these pieces together, imagining and creating new collections, each one different in its own style—all whimsical, all playful, all deeply infused with history.
“I can tell you what it feels like to work with these old textiles,” she says. “It’s a labour of love and it’s a continuation of love into the world. That is why I do it.”
honeybea.ca @thehoneybeashop
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dimensions of whimsy marlitoys
CRAFT
Lidiya Marinchuk
KYIV, UKRAINE
Tell us about yourself.
My name is Lidiya Marinchuk. I am a Ukrainian handmade toy and accessory maker from Kyiv, Ukraine, currently living and working in Lisbon, Portugal. My brand is named Marlitoys. “Marli” is an abbreviation of my name.
What do you make or create?
I create handmade interior toys and accessories, mostly animals, because I adore them and they are my true inspiration. All of my works are 100% handmade, and all my characters are invented and created by me. I use textile and acrylic paints for my work.
Do you consider your creations to be whimsical?
Yes! I think that exactly this word best describes the mood of my characters. They have a unique personality that sets them apart from all others. They have a playful and lighthearted mood that usually brings a smile to people’s faces. I love using bright colours, unusual shapes and imaginative designs that highlight each character’s individuality.
How do you bring playfulness into your creative process?
Creating my characters is always a game for me. I love the process of giving free rein to my imagination and just doing whatever it tells me. Working with bright colours always lifts my mood, transporting me to a world of childhood and freedom.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
My wish is to make the world a little bit kinder, to add more colours to everyday life. My art is about simple things like love, friendship, joy, dreams, hope. They are simple but so necessary.
@marlitoys marlitoys.etsy.com
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PUBLISHER, EDITOR, DESIGNER
