Autumn Curtains

As the Autumnal winds increase their chills this week we have been inspired to get into a little nesting and curtains have been on the studio agenda.

We have had access to an incredibly light voile and a raw lithuanian linen for this little batch of drapes. It's been a delight to play with those textures, working with the lightness of botanical prints like the Flax-lily bellow and the weight of the Amsterdam on the linen.

We started making curtains years ago as features for architects, using the fabric to filter in the day and add an interesting light element to a room. It's been really nice to make these far more accessible now and put them into store even though we can still only do very limited batches.

The linen has this incredibly chocolate fragrance to it when you first roll it down the tables, its such a pleasure to print.

"At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity."

E. M. Forster

new soft cubes and rare mini zaishu

Mathew Butler dropped off two dozen sets of of his mini zaishu seat panels on his way to the airport. He was on his way to Vietnam and Japan to work on a photography project recording artists work spaces.

We felt a bit of a responsibility printing the last set of zaishu panels, and they've been sitting in the studio for quite a while. So anyway that explains why we've gone a bit over the top on the production values.

I love this size, 300mm tall. We have two at home and I'm currently using one as a plant stand, but in the past it's been a bedside light stand, a sculptural object on the table, a waste paper bin, a newspaper holder and a our kids seat.

They definitely belong to my kids though and I've no doubt they'll be taking them with them one day. So I've archived two of this edition for me, which means there's now twenty two left.

Flora and her friend Kate drop in after school to have a look.

Master upholster Jonathan Keely is the only person allowed to makes the soft cubes. He arrived this morning to a heroes welcome with six of the best. The one below is my pick, Clara is more attached to the burnt orange.

Jonathan and I are planning a new re-upholstery project, he's bringing a bigger van next time.

Flora and Kate testing the slip stitches.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival 2011

Last weekend spacecraft studio gratefully accepted an invitation to attend the Gala dinner for the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. To be served dishes created by Michelin star chefs from around the globe was a marvellous end to a project imagined by Christian Wagstaff and his design team.

After searching for the hidden entrance to the original Commonwealth Wool Store in North Melbourne, we started up the old dimly lit delivery tunnel. Far up ahead the lights changed gradually from dingy florescent to warm and somewhat spicy.

At the top the hall opened to an incredibly fragrant scene of full scale spice colours, printed pillars which we had done the day before and tables so beautifully jammed with abundant design it could have been a challenge to figure out the knives and forks.

As the light faded you realised that the space was going to handle the transformation effortlessly.

The project began with a call from the event designer Christian Wagstaff with an idea for spacecraft printed cloths for the tables, that led on to light shade prints which went on to Kristina and Ben and eventually he elegantly roped us into bringing screens down to the event site and printing vertically onto the pillars of what otherwise is used as a parking space.

Here are some pics of the site the day before the event, those windows really blew us away! Christian used these really well to light the evening from the outside in.

It's been a treat to work with Christian again after the Prahan Market bunting project, very refreshing to deal with a designer who so easily works massive colour into a space.

Brook Andrew at GOMA, Brisbane

Just before christmas the constantly coloured spacecraft studio turned black and white with the welcome addition of another project with the fantastic Melbourne artist Brook Andrew.

Brook's again been working through ideas of indigenous peoples representation through history and sent us through some of his old postcards for a show 'Ancestral Worship' at the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA).

There's an eerie abstraction to these images; who on earth the pictures are of and what they may have thought about being framed amongst the 'interesting' exotic in household collections for over a century.

An early sketch of Brook Andrew's plan.

Brook Andrew's print beneath Joseph Kosuth's wall paper test done for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA).

Greenhouse By Joost.

Over the past months we've had the pleasure of sharing some ideas with the lovely Joost in the lead up to his great embarkment on the Sydney Greenhouse at The Rocks, Sydney Harbour.

He came to us with a concept for a duel purpose 'T-Bag'; a sturdy T-shirt that can also zip-up at the base for use as a bag.

We puzzled with the idea, until finally settling on the solution to re-use castaway print t-shirts, the kind made for one off community marathons or school fundraisers and never seen again.

Joost wrote us some cheesy down-to-earth puns for the re-print and we got to work. It's brilliant working with someone who in essence is so experimental with sustainable design.

Our inks are as ecologically neutral as possible, but demand for coal and root based pigments doesn't come by often enough in the industry.

Definitely recommend a look at the 360 degree view of the Greenhouse on Joost's site, Fantastic, just love the reused tyre parquetry floor.

Patchwork cushions

Ends of fabric rolls have been encroaching the corners of the studio and getting underfoot, so we've laid out these small yards of linen, cotton and damask to be used for patchwork cushions and quilts.

Close to our heart is the task of cherishing any piece of fabric possible, offcuts, remnants, samples and backing cloths have all found their way back into the day's design work. So often designs and new colour ways begin with some chance beauty found at the overlap of a print or the little stacks of edges left after cutting patterns.

Jeannette Mayne, began with Spacecraft years ago working her patch-working wonders into our studio offcuts to make the patchwork cushion one of our favourite objects.

studio - the angels coming together

I've been working with images of angels found in Melbourne, creating a set of twelve angels that will go into the stores first week in December. Although some have already found homes we'll show all twelve together before they go their separate ways.

I took the photographs after I found an idea in an old sketch book. I still can't figure out exactly what I was proposing to make, but I had a very enjoyable couple of hours re-reading the notes from Walter Benjamin's critique of a Paul Klee drawing of an angel and my thoughts on seeing the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. That probably places the sketch book at around 1986 or 87.

Anyway, we're feeling very well looked after at the studio.