Our Summer Sale Launches on the Open Seas

Why Set Sale?

Some small businesses shy away from sales events, but I find them a really exciting part of the year. For us, it's really important to strip out bits from our collection so we can refresh it. We've already spent much of the year lining up new potential suppliers. We spend what adds up to a couple of weeks a year at trade shows - we're even off to one in Denmark in August. To keep the business fresh and alive the Summer Sale is essential as it clears way for new designs and designers.

Why do anything if you don't do it in style?

We're really lucky to have a close collaboration with the House Doctor group and we're starting to stock their gourmet food brand, Nicholas Vahe. They helped provide ingredients for nibbles and drinks including a Sangria de Cava with rhubarb and raspberry lemonade and an Amaretto iced coffee - really simple but crowd pleasing cocktails great for a summer party. 

Sangria de Cava

60ml Cava

60ml Raspberry and Rhubarb Lemonade

15ml Brandy

Seasonal fruits and ice to serve

If making this in a glass put the ice and fruit in a glass, measure and carefully pour the other ingredients down the side of the glass so not to lose too much fizz. Stir.

Iced Amaretto Coffee

30ml Creme Caramel Espresso Coffee

100ml almond milk

30ml amaretto

Crushed Ice

Mix the ingredients in a jug or shaker. Pour over a glass of crushed ice.

Tofu Sticks Served with Spicy Mango Sauce

250g pack of firm tofu

Juice of half a lime

2 tbsp light soya sauce

1 tbsp agave nectar

1 tbsp sesame oil

Oil for frying

Slice the block of tofu into 2.5cm “steaks”. Place in a shallow bowl or food container. Mix the marinade ingredients together and pour over the tofu. Leave to marinade overnight or for 4 hours, turning halfway to marinade all over.

Fry the tofu steaks on a medium-high heat. Let them go brown on each side before turning. At the end, add the marinade to the pan - it’ll sizzle so be careful but let it reduce to form a sticky coating for the tofu. Once the tofu has cooled, cut into 2.5cm cubes and stab with a cocktail stick. Serve with Nicholas Vahe spicy mango gourmet sauce or another dip of your choosing.

Summer Rolls

250g celeriac - julienne cut or grated 250g white cabbage - finely sliced 40ml Nicholas Vahe mango vinegar 40ml cold pressed rapeseed oil ½ a cos lettuce

Coriander, mint or Thai basil to taste 12 rice paper wrappers for rolls Nicholas Vahe salad topper We developed this recipe to give people at our Summer party a salad they could eat as finger food. Mix the cabbage and celeriac with the mango vinegar and rapeseed oil, plus a pinch or two of salt. I like to let this mix “marinade” for a few hours if possible as it softens the slaw. Cut the lettuce and prepare the herbs so that they are in pieces about half the diameter of your rice papers. This makes it easy to assemble the rolls To assemble the rolls, make sure you have all your ingredients laid out and space to roll as the papers get sticky quickly. Dip a rice paper in a bowl of boiling water with tongs, remove it as it starts to soften. Lay out some lettuce, slaw mix and herbs in the centre of the roll leaving exposed paper all around. Fold the base and top of the circle in towards the middle, then roll from one side, keeping them tight. It takes a little practice. We cut the rolls diagonally and dip them in a seed mix to serve.

Simple Tartlets

We also made some simple pastry (shop bought - it's Vegan so made it easy for those who like plant-based food) pastry cases and filled them with Nicholas Vahe fig jam and Nicholas Vahe coconut and passion fruit jam, topped with a strawberry. Simple but delicious.

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Winner, Winner, Plant Based Dinner

Check out our social media for the chance to win a Nicholas Vahe hamper until 23rd July 2018.

Designed for a Simple Life

The simple life - what is that?

I’ve always been a planner. If I go on holiday, I like a packing list drawn up a week before at the latest. If I throw a party or have people over I need shopping lists, menus, music playlists, invite lists … it’s a pretty big list of lists. So the challenge for me is not throwing a fabulous party, but making it effortless.

The latest party I’m planning is a sale launch party at our Wapping Wharf shop. It might be business, but much of our heart and soul goes into that: many of our customers are friends and the connections we’ve built over the past few years are really important so I’m looking forward to it as much as a social as a work event.

When you want inspiration on effortless multitasking, look to busy mums.

“Grab some pasta, get a bag of salad, open a bottle - people just care about the company.” 

This is my sister’s advice on entertaining and I’m trying to take it to heart. We’ve got several new gourmet food lines in from Nicholas Vahe at the moment so I’ve designed a menu around opening jars and bottles. I can’t say that it’s been completely simple, but the food prep list is considerably shorter than normal.

Below is the first recipe for a simple carrot dip. We’ve designed the menu to be largely plant based for all our Vegan friends - this one, it turns out, is great on toast with some avocado or chickpeas. We’re serving it in filo baskets to make it easy “finger food”, but a crostini would be just as good.

The Fig1 Summer Sale Launch Evening is on 11/7/2018 6-9pm. RSVP by email for places.

Carrot, Cumin and Coriander Dip

Ingredients

500g organic carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
30ml Olive oil
30ml water
Pinch of salt
Small bunch coriander leaves

Place all the ingredients except the coriander leaf in an oven dish. Mix well and cover with foil. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 40 minutes, then uncover, stir, and bake again for a further 40 minutes or until the carrots are starting to soften (they don’t have to be completely soft).

Once cooled, place in a food processor with the coriander leaves and blitz until smooth. Add some extra olive oil, water and salt to adjust the consistency and to taste.

The Mother Load

If there was a mother of invention, it was mine. There was little she wouldn't make for us. Occasionally we wished it was chocolate and not carob cake in our lunch box, but mostly it made us feel special, treasured and nurtured. She's moved on from the Good Life phase and into the age of Prosecco (the Elderflower wine never was the best), although it's still usually served up with a home made meal for the ever increasing family she's now grand matriarch of. These are a few of our favourite finds for Mums this mother's day.

The Moth

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Mums like to listen, right? This collection of true stories from The Moth is like a nourishing soup for the brain cooked up in the melting pot which is New York. People from all over the world tell their life stories at the Moth and this is a collection of some of the best. Find it here.

Øy Hand Cream

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They perform some magic each and every day, Mum’s hands. Mums are a well of creativity - always able to turn their hands to a new project, fixing everything from bikes and grazed knees to broken hearts. They need their hands and we need them. Find it here.

Salted Caramel Truffles

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More than worth the calories, these hand-crafted and gorgeously boxed truffles from Somerset’s James Chocolates make a stunning gift. They’ll be a memorable moment on the lips. Find it here.

Prosecco Bath Soak

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A soak in the bath with a glass of the good stuff? Light and bubbly with a floral bouquet - just don’t get carried away and tip Aperol in the bath too. Made in Cumbria but inspired by Italy’s favourite way to kick back and relax, it’s one effervescent way to treat your Mum. Find it here.

Champagne Glass

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These classic beauties are the perfect way to raise a glass to Mum and celebrate how she makes life awesome. Paired with a bottle and a card it's the party she deserves nearly as instantly as she made you feel better last time you needed her. Find it here.

White Tea and Ginger Candle

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Mums help light the way through life but when mine does finally sit down with that glass of bubbly she loves some gentle candle light. This white tea and ginger candle from Meraki sets the mood for some well earned rest and relaxation. Probably best if you do the washing up too, though. Find it here.

Bird Candle Holder

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What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare? Not a sentiment my Mum would hold much truck with - she’s always way too busy doing something - but on the rare occasion she does stand still she likes looking at the garden birds. These beauties on fine ceramic dance in the candle light. Find it here.

Wow Factor Scarves

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Always making a difference in the background these scarves are a great way to bring out the leading lady in any Mum. Designed by Copenhagen design duo Beck Sondergaard, their scarves and accessories have playful character to match Mum’s joie de vivre. Find them here.

Hepworth Necklace

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Ready for a chain of inspiration? Barbara Hepworth, the sculptor, was fascinated by finding symbols of motherhood in the Cornish landscape. It inspired her work and that work inspired this necklace, by East End jewellery designers Wolf and Moon. Your Mum might like it too. Find it here.

Clematis Lights

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And if all else fails say it with flowers. Hand crafted metal decorations make these lights more artwork than ornament. Find it here.

Picnic I up - it's festival time!

Those long days where the sunlight lasts all evening, the grass smells sweet, the uptempo beat of the music keeps going sound tracking the chatter of your friends: that's what we love about summer.

We're not alone - perhaps it's the proximity to Glastonbury which means Bristol, our home town, is packed full of home grown festivals all summer long. We love it. This weekend is Bristol's biggest festival - the Harbour Festival - which is one of Europe's largest free festivals and takes place around the Harbour Side and other central sites. The crazy mish-mash of out there and loud local bands, contemporary dance troupes who can contort your concept of what shape a human body actually is, local history, the sweet dulcet acoustics of singer songwriters who sing poetry to music and a good helping of Bristol's best food and drink - all come together to make one amazing weekend.

Our new shop premises at Wapping Wharf is within the Harbour Festival site so it will be the first year we're fully part of it. To celebrate, we've a competition to win a set of Rice Melamine - the perfect companion to the festival picnic. The prize includes 4 cups and 4 small bowls in this summer's prints as well as a plate.

To enter all you have to do is like and comment on and share our posts on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter before the deadline 28th July 2017. Competition winners will be picked on 31st July and contacted via social media.

Competition Time: Win a Dybdahl Print

Heinrick Dybdahl is a tall Norweigan magpie living in Copenhagen. He's a collector of images. He raids archives for beautiful things, picking them over for the best bits and then meticulously and carefully works on bringing out their beauty.

Read on to win 2 prints - one for you and one for a friend.

His prints are vibrant and full of colour and the result of hours of work restoring and enhancing old found images. Sometimes he cuts those images up or finds finer detail in them, enlarges or shrinks them and crops them to choice bits. The resulting images are a homage to the days when people explored the world through the pages of books and through exhibitions. The days when travel was a real luxury but jumping into a picture was the way people learnt about the mysteries of the world.

We've a chance to win a pair of prints this week - one for you and one for a friend - on our social media channels. You can enter on Instagram, on Facebook and on Twitter and if you enter on all three you will increase your chance of winning. Please note the prints to win will be 30 x 40 in size valued at £20 each, unframed.

Deadline 4th June 2017

To enter on Facebook:

Click like and share on our competition post 

Name the friend you think would like a print in the post

To enter on Instagram

Like the competition post on Instagram 

Use their Instagram handle to name the person you think would like a print in the comments below the post

To enter on Twitter

Favourite the post on Twitter

Retweet the post and append the Twitter handle of the person you think would like a print to the end of your retweet

Fig1.2 - Opening Our New Shop

Designing and building our second shop has been a personal creative journey for me. 

The process of opening our second shop has been quite an exciting journey. We first took a look at a new unit at Bristol's Wapping Wharf back in August. Wapping Wharf is a unique development. It's in the docks in Bristol on a previously little used piece of land which has now been opened up as a walk way from South Bristol to the city - a route that takes you into the historic harbour to some of the best of Bristol. More than that, though, and more than other developments of a similar nature it has embraced Bristol's independent and creative spirit, from the metal work detailing by local craftsmen on the buildings to the now bustling selection of completely independent businesses in the area. The man who runs the development company for Wapping Wharf, Stuart Hatton, has been clear from the start that he wanted to create an independent and sustainable community here, not a run of the mill estate. Some of the best of Bristol has gathered at Wapping Wharf and so it was with great excitement that we looked into opening our second outlet there.

For me in particular it has been an opportunity to build something new on to what we already have. Creativity, making new spaces and new businesses are all part of my DNA - my Mum and Dad had several businesses when we were growing up and my Dad was a carpenter. Some of my first interests in interior design were born out of working with the family and so it feels in many ways that Fig2, as we now call the second shop amongst ourselves, was the culmination of years of experience. For me it was like we had a chance to take all the best bits of what I've learnt over the years of running Fig1 and make them sing: a chance to take apart and reassemble the business to really show off what it has become.

I love the process of planning, designing, imagining and building: of learning and creating. 

It's a long and sometimes tiring journey but it is filled with creativity and that is the really good stuff - the stuff I thrive on and love. Nothing beats the satisfaction of getting to the end of  a long and carefully planned project; being able to look at your work and say "I made this".

The process began by redesigning our branding for Fig1 - updating our logo, and developing some brand patterns and styles for our graphics. I worked on the brand update with my sister who is an illustrator. It was a learning process for both of us, but we wanted to do this work ourselves so that what we came up with was a set of graphics which really speak about Fig1 and which are appropriate to the business. What we came up with married design elements - geometric hexagons and rhombuses, an asterisk motif - tied together with more natural elements - paint splodges, textures and pen lines. To us, it's a frame work in which we can speak visually about the creativity and design we love.

This graphics work was first as we wanted it to inform the interiors. I've worked many times with my Dad on interiors projects, helping him design and build furniture for a delicatessen as well as working on the original Fig1 shop. He's retired now but you never truly put down your tools and so, for the shop build, I had the great pleasure of working with him again. A much bigger space than the other shop, we wanted to keep the design elements clean and clear, to use the new branding and to allow space for lighting and furniture.

Part of the process of designing and building is learning. We wanted to work with new materials - plywood with a laminate finish, scaffold pole, industrial lighting but softened and made flexible enough to change with the business. Bringing all these elements together took research, planning and a hard graft with the final build being done in just 4 weeks so we could open before Christmas. We're thrilled with the results and really enjoying meeting new customers and colleagues at Wapping Wharf.

Fig1 Wapping Wharf opened the Saturday before Christmas but will be having a full launch soon.

To Celebrate opening we have a 15% Discount code active until 1st May 2017 of MyOpenShop to use in store or online - download the voucher!

Have a Rice Christmas

For several years now we’ve visited Denmark on "J day" - not solely for the event itself but it happens to have been the time when Rice has invited us to visit their showroom. J day is the day that several Danish breweries launch their Christmas beer and the day is used as an excuse for a Christmas launch party across the country. We’ve joined in the festivities for several years at Copenhagen’s kitschest bar - Central Hjornet. This particular bar is known for it’s huge array of Christmas decorations - the entire ceiling is covered in baubles, so many that you can no longer see the ceiling for all the bling. 

It is part of a big tradition in Denmark of Christmas decorations - we know several small shops in Copenhagen who do a selection of glass decorations featuring everything from Father Christmas to random fruit and vegetables. These decorations are collected, a few each year, and treasured.

Well this year Rice have launched their own crazy collection of glass decorations in typical Rice style. Kitsch and glamorous, gorgeous, unusual and certainly unique, these little pieces of Christmas bling cheer me up. They are wonderful little Christmas birds and modern takes on Danish retro decorations which really catch the eye. If you are looking for an unusual way to celebrate then look no further.

Think Local: Introducing Little Nell

It’s always good to find a local supplier we really like. Over the years I have worked with several Bristol designers and makers and Penny from Little Nell is one of our most local, living and just one street away from our Totterdown shop. Her work also fits with the Geometric shapes and patterns and gold accents we love so much at the moment so she we were quick to snap up some of her work when we found her at the London trade show. In future we’ll be meeting at the local pub to discuss business!

Look Inside the Box

Beautiful Bath House

It’s always worth looking inside the pretty box. Packaging design is one of my favourite things and really nicely presented and designed packaging get me going. Some of the best is from Bath House - their products are packaged in textured card, embossed and often foiled. Beautifully presented items which make giving them a joy.

Even better though is that once inside the box you find a company which is committed to UK manufacture. Based in Cumbria, Bath House have a beautifully high quality range of products with well balanced scents and natural ingredients wherever possible. Their latest Classic Collection features the fragrances of Pomegranate; Jasmine and Mandarin; and Juniper Gin. We love them!

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Don't forget we are still running our competition to win a set of Rice DK Autumn Winter 2016 melamine.

On Trend with Bloomingville and House Doctor Vases

Find a selection of Bloomigville ceramic
vases on our site.

The natural textures and shapes of ceramics are all the rage this season. Despite a surface sheen to both ceramics and glass, one of the beautiful things I find about them is that the material is natural. I used to work a lot with glass making pieces of stained glass, often kiln firing small pieces. In glass you find small bubbles or seeds, light catches the imperfections in blown glass and refracts light in imperfect ways. Ceramics, similarly, show texture and colour where the glaze has pooled on unusual shapes - thicker in places creating variations - or where the process of firing in a kiln has caused unusual blooms. These small inconsistencies are something to be treasured and celebrated to me. They make each piece unique and unusual - like well worn faces they can each tell a story.



These vases by Bloomingville are a case in point. Collect them and fill with succulents or flowers, a selection on the table is like a landscaped miniature garden full of sculpture, shape, colour and texture and inviting the eye to linger. The retro glass "LID" collection by House Doctor compliments it well and if you buy the brass lid component the vases can become candle sticks. Mix and match shapes and sizes for a truly stunning centre piece.

And if you ever get a chance to work with a kiln and either glass or ceramics I would recommend it. The excitement of not quite knowing what will come out is a joy.

The House Doctor "LID" collection

Competition Time!

Our favourite company Rice launch a new range of 6 prints each season and each season tells a story. This season’s “Be Extraordinary” range is dedicated to the creatives amongst us. They feature hand drawn illustrations, unusual patterns and paint splodges. The soft and inspiring colour palette would look so at home in an artist’s studio that we want to fill them with paint brushes, squeezed out tubes of acrylic and scraps of torn paper ready to collage together something both fabulous and definitely extraordinary.

We’ve got a competition for you to win a set of these extraordinary patterns - just check in to our Facebook page, Instagram feed or twitter and tell us what you find inspires you to make something extraordinary. For each social network you interact on we will give you an extra entry so up to 3 per person.

You’ll also need to fill in the form below so we know how to contact you if you win. And in even more great news, we have a 20% discount code which will get you a discount on any of the “Be Extraordinary” Rice range so if you just can’t wait you don’t have to! Simply add anything from our Rice Autumn 2016 range to your basket and use the code MyExtraRice20 or mention the code in the shop. The code is exclusively for new Autumn 2016 stock.

Competition and discount code end at midnight on 20th November 2016. Competition open to UK residents only. Delivery to UK addresses only.

The competition is now closed.

Stay at Fig1

The kitchen of our new Airbnb with some colourful finds from the shop

My sister recently had a baby boy - a big, bouncing and boisterous baby boy who was so keen to come into the world he was born, as if auditioning for an episode of call the midwife, on a bathroom floor in a terraced house in Totterdown. A true Totterdowner. 9 years ago we decided to start a bright and colourful business in this bright and colourful corner of Bristol - we always loved our area and wanted to bring new facilities to it, but like many in Totterdown we moved here, we weren't born here. However our business was, and like my nephew, it grew and changed. Each time I see him he's a little grown. You can still see the changes but, like the changes to our shop, you really realise when you stop and look back at the first photos just how significant those changes are.

I made this origami shirt from some double
sided paper by Rosehip mounted in a Nkuku
frame

So after 9 years of our little shop in Totterdown growing, doing well on line and becoming a stockist of many different Danish and British brands, we realised we needed to make a few changes to the property we were based in. We've redone our shop layout to allow a much bigger storage and packing area, and this, in turn, has freed up the space above the shop. Excitingly we're now renting this out on as short term lets on Airbnb. It's a self contained flat with a kitchen, bathroom and bedroom which can sleep up to 4.

It was a great chance to decorate up the space with some of our favourite finds from Nkuku, Rice, House Doctor and other great stockists. We've had real fun making an eclectic space full of small works of art, finds and trinkets from the shop. We've used simple postcards and graphic art in Nkuku frames, together with some home made art to decorate the place. The kitchen is full of colourful Rice kitchen items, and of course we've used a mix of lighting from House Doctor, Rice and Nkuku to really set the flat off.

Now we've finally finished decorating and the first few guests have stayed with us we'd love you to look at what we've done. Our very first guests were my brother inlaw's family, come to see the baby, already setting down memories so in years time we can all sit down and marvel at how he's grown. It seemed fitting.

Find our Airbnb listing here.

Tissue Paper Flowers - Great for Gift Wrapping or For Easter Gardens.

When was the last time something a stranger said to you changed you? Conversations with strangers are forged of pleasantries about the weather and “excuse me but do you have the time”, not memorable things. But one year when I was exhibiting some of my glass work at the Totterdown art trail, a stranger replied to my “it’s just a hobby” with “But hobbies are when some of the best things are made - they’re when people make things because they want to, not because they have to.” It’s an easy thing to forget when working creatively - that feeling of the freedom to take your time playing and to do things because you want to do them.

I think of that conversation when I’m busy trying to get the best photo of something, make something for a shop display or create graphics for use online - if you make and do things with the freedom and joy of doing them for the sake of it, it will be better.

In the early days of Fig1 my sister and I used to make these paper flowers for shop displays - they’re relatively easy to do. Although we have some artificial flowers in stock it seemed good to spend a little time making some from some of the funky Rice tissue paper.

1. Layer up three or more sheets of tissue paper roughly 13cm x 50cm (50cm is the overall width of the sheet I was using - this size doesn't have to be exact).
2. Fold the paper into a concertina along the longer edge. I made the strips of the concertina roughly 2cm wide
3. Your now left with a 13cm strip of paper 2 cm wide. In the centre, twist round a pipe cleaner, some copper wire or tie with string. If using wire I used a piece 80 cm long in order to leave a long "stem" on the flower for gift wrapping. I used pliers to twist the wire so that it forms a nice tight grip around the paper.
4. Optional - you can shape the ends of your paper so that the tips are semi circles or triangles - this does make the paper more likely to tear in the later stages.
5. Open out one side of the paper into a semicircle then start to pull down the innermost piece of tissue into the centre of the flower starting at one side of the semi circle. Work your way round to the other side.
6. Repeat step 5 with the piece of tissue below the first and with each piece of tissue until this half of the flower is formed.
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 with the other half of the flower.

The tissue can tear a little but then nature isn’t perfect either. These flowers can be great for gift wrapping or for making for your Easter garden.

Rice DK Autumn 2015 Preview

Rice - Denmark's brightest and most colourful design house - likes to be noticed. You can instantly
tell you've arrived at Rice HQ when you turn the corner on the small industrial estate in which they are situated and spot the wall painted bright pink. Rice have been a big part of our business since we started our small shop in 2007 and we've seen their collection grow and develop over the years, but never has it been anything other than bright, bold and colourful. Rice are now such an important part of our business that we have come to Odense in Denmark to preview Autumn / Winter 2015 as early as possible, and we're pleased to be here, not least of all because Rice share our ethical business principals.

Sometimes a place feels instantly like home - rarely does an office achieve that. Our visit is a chance to catch up with old friends - various colleagues at Rice we have worked with over the years greet us. Rice, however, has an ethic built around home comfort, family life, entertaining and friendship so maybe it should be little of a surprise that this is one office which manages to be comfortable and welcoming. Decorated typical Rice-style with a combination of old and new pieces of furniture, all set off by a huge amount of colour, the Rice office is a place to relax and play as well as work. The whole office is open plan so everyone is accessible. Even the staff canteen is a riot of beautiful colours. It quickly becomes obvious that design, colour and a happy environment inform everything Rice does.

But work is what we've come all this way to do so before long it is down to previewing the new collection for Autumn 2015. This year, Rice have nailed their Autumn colour range with a combination of rich purples and blues together with muted pinks. The new designs on the melamine are beautiful and quirky. Thrown into the Autumn colours are splashes of gold and rich blues. Quirky characters also feature in the collection as usual - playfulness is a key part of Rice's style and this season's striking illustrations by Andrea Letterie feature scarf clad polar bears and cups of whipped cream topped hot chocolate. It's almost enough to help you forget the beautiful summer weather and make you hanker for longer autumn nights in. 

Because a busy day always requires a hearty lunch, Helene and Maria take us to the Riceteria - Rice's new venture into cafe culture. It's a great new project in the centre of Odense - the perfect place to hang out with a cold drink on a hot day, full of young mothers and other lunchers eating and drinking Rice style. The Riceteria is a great showcase for Rice products with all the food served on them together with a shop area attached. Helene tells us that Rice are now franchising the Riceteria to several locations in Germany. 

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There are some great new designs coming to the new collection at Rice. We love these big candle lanterns and some of the quirky new illustrations from Andrea Letterie. It almost makes you hanker after the colder winter nights.

New Rice Autumn stock will be arriving soon at fig1.co.uk.