Coulson Macleod has been invited to sell via the very hip and trendy mydeco boutique. How lucky are we?

The main site of mydeco is a home décor portal, cre­ated by Brent Hober­man and Martha Lane Fox, of last​minute​.com.  mydeco “brings together the country’s widest range of home fur­nish­ing products from over 700 retail­ers into one place. From high street stores like Heal’s and John Lewis to niche retailers.”

Within the site is mydeco boutique, which “aims to show­case a lim­ited num­ber of lead­ing inde­pend­ent design­ers that mydeco feels rep­res­ent the UK’s innov­at­ive design talent.”

Coulson Macleod will be sold along­side such huge names as Atelier Abi­gail Ahern, Kelly Hop­pen and Celia Birtwell. Swoon!

‘It’s the indi­vidu­al­ity and char­ac­ter you get that make designer pieces spe­cial,’ says says interi­ors expert Rachel Moses from Design Nation. “Most of the beau­ti­ful items you spot in mydeco boutique are hand­made in Bri­tain. They are all bang on trend, ori­ginal in design (no cheap imit­a­tions here), pro­duced in small batches, and well respec­ted in their indus­tries.” Yep! that’s us.

Keen to find some­thing unique that you won’t see on the high street? Then mydeco boutique is for you. An “exclus­ive treas­ure trove of avant-garde, inde­pend­ent design­ers at your fingertips.”

IMPORTANT NEWS: As of 1^st Septem­ber 2010 Coulson Macleod will be a little bit more expens­ive to buy. Sorry.

We’ve been debat­ing this for some time now here at Coulson Macleod HQ. Basic­ally we don’t want to put our prices up. But if we want to con­tinue grow­ing, then we have to.

For any reg­u­lar read­ers of this blog, you’ll have been fol­low­ing our pro­gress as we grow and learn, the way you do when you launch a new business.

In Septem­ber Coulson Macleod will be 18 months old. It’s been a fant­astic 18 months. When we star­ted the busi­ness we had no idea just what a global brand Coulson Macleod would become. Of course we hoped that people would like our art, and that some would become customers.

As the busi­ness has slowly grown we’ve made little tweaks here and there. And occa­sion­ally we make some whop­ping changes. Over the course of 18 months, we’ve had three com­pletely new web­sites, can any­one remem­ber the first ver­sion? We’ve cre­ated then deleted entire col­lec­tions. And we’ve talked end­lessly about where we want to go in the future. Some­times to each other, some­times to any­one who’ll listen.

The out­come is always the same. That in order to sell through stock­ists, and online mar­ket­places, and to go to trade fairs, and to cre­ate new and excit­ing col­lec­tions, (and then there’s some­thing called VAT, which I don’t under­stand and Coulson gets fed up try­ing to explain!), our prices are just a little too low to make this a long time viable and prof­it­able business.

Our plans don’t involve char­ging Damien Hirst prices so we can retire to a villa in Anti­bes (although that would be nice). When we set out we wanted to cre­ate afford­able art that we loved. This will remain the same. But you’ll just need a few more pen­nies (oh OK then, you’ll need a few more pounds).

So if you fancy own­ing a won­der­ful and unique piece of art at their cur­rent bril­liant prices, then I’d sug­gest buy­ing your Coulson Macleod before 1^st September.

Thought I’d just tot up where in the world we’ve shipped our art to. So aside from the UK, Coulson Macleod prints now hang in homes in the fol­low­ing countries…

Aus­tralia, Canada, Fin­land, France, Ger­many, Greece, India, Ire­land, Italy, Neth­er­lands, New Zea­l­and, Nor­way, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emir­ates, and of course from the east to west coast of the USA.

How very, very cool!

Last night Coulson Macleod went to the open­ing night of Open 10, the annual open con­tem­por­ary art show that is being held in Kettering’s beau­ti­ful Alfred East Art Gal­lery.

We per­used the 83 selec­ted art­works, nat­ur­ally admir­ing some more than oth­ers, sip­ping our glass of wine. A jolly lovely way to spend an evening.

We blogged about Open 10 last week when we found out that one of our art­works ‘The Six­ties’ had been selec­ted to exhibit and we men­tioned some other artists who had also been selec­ted. So here are few more names to check out (again I can only point you to the artists who have a web­site, and you’d be sur­prised just how many don’t)…

Joanne Archer, Stella Ben­ford, Roger Brad­ley, Craig Bridge­ford, Paul Bursnall, Andree Fletcher, Sarah Kay, Brian Mut­ton, Emma Raby, and War­ren Shaw .

Open 10 is now open to the gen­eral pub­lic and closes on 19^th June. So if you hap­pen to be in the area do pop in and check out the local tal­ent and maybe pick up a piece of con­tem­por­ary art.

Since launch­ing Coulson Macleod a little over a year ago (we star­ted the busi­ness in March 2009) we’ve updated our web­site twice. Actu­ally updat­ing is incor­rect, we’ve com­pletely redesigned the web­site twice.

And now we’ve just launched our third version.

Each time we strip it back fur­ther for an even more uncluttered look. We love sim­pli­city. And we totally love our new ver­sion, which was designed by us.

Would love to hear your comments.

As you know, we had our Coulson Macleod art­work pho­to­graphed pro­fes­sion­ally last Tues­day. We hired a pretty little chapel and a com­mer­cial pho­to­grapher. We had piles of props, some of which are ours, some we bor­rowed, and some we bought just for the occa­sion. And here are a couple of the shots taken…

We’ve got 174 shots to work through. As you can see from the bot­tom photo, some of the shots need crop­ping (we obvi­ously don’t want to see wall sock­ets in the final image). But we love the over­all feel. We were lucky with the light that day too, which flooded through the chapel win­dows and meant that most of the shots were taken without need­ing arti­fi­cial light.

Can’t wait to put them on our new-look web­site. In fact we can’t wait to show-off our new website.

So if you’re from a magazine and fancy fea­tur­ing Coulson Macleod art, then we have plenty of high-res images to send you.

Pretty chuffed that Coulson Macleod has been selec­ted to exhibit at Open 10, Ket­ter­ing Art Gallery’s Annual Open Con­tem­por­ary Art Exhib­i­tion.

Our ‘The Six­ties’ print will be on view (and on sale) from April 28^th to June 19^th.

The event aims to ‘bring together con­tem­por­ary art from emer­ging and estab­lished artists in the region in paint­ing, print, tex­tiles, sculpt­ing, and new media.’

212 works were sub­mit­ted to Open 10, and 83 have been selec­ted to exhibit. This year the selec­tion panel con­sisted of Craig Ash­ley, Pro­du­cer of Visual Arts and Media at mac, Andrew Berg­man, Part­ner at the Ket­ter­ing branch of soli­cit­ors Wilson Browne, and Simon Lake, Senior Cur­ator of Art at Leicester’s New Walk Museum and Art Gal­lery.

Other artists that have been selec­ted include…

Ivan Green (two of his prints have just been acquired by the V&A for inclu­sion in their per­man­ent col­lec­tion), artist and illus­trator Chris Prout who has a fun-to-read blog The Paint­ers Pro­gress, Rae Flack, Kelly Gard­ner, Brenda McK­etty, Mark Fearn­ley, and Linda Straw.

I could obvi­ously only select the artists that actu­ally have a web pres­ence. I Googled their names so I just hope that these are the cor­rect artists!

Let us know what you think.

Coulson Macleod’s latest col­lec­tion of lim­ited edi­tion prints… Calm Britannia

Dis­tressed Union Jack flags prin­ted onto nat­ural, coarse-weave, unbleached linen and then encased in a chunky sand­wich of reclaimed wood.

Three dif­fer­ent quotes.

Each print costs £169.

The frames are all hand­made using reclaimed antique Vic­torian roof tim­bers. We’re totally lov­ing all the nat­ural defects in the tim­ber too, they just ooze charm and char­ac­ter. Bring on the knot holes, nail holes, warps, and water marks!

We’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with these prints. So unique. And we par­tic­u­larly enjoy see­ing the linen slightly waft when you open a door!

Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saat­chi & Saat­chi World­wide wrote this lovely piece about us on his blog KR Con­nect,

“A few weeks ago, I dis­covered Coulson Macleod, an art busi­ness mak­ing waves from Northamp­ton­shire. It’s the cre­ation of Mark Coulson and Han­nah Macleod, a couple who share a strik­ing design aes­thetic, rad­ic­ally pos­it­ive ambi­tion, and, most import­antly, love.

I’ve bought sev­eral of their pieces, which are all hand-finished in lim­ited edi­tions. The works in the Love Col­lec­tion are favor­ites of mine – bold typo­graphic designs fea­tur­ing declar­a­tions of feel­ing and fam­ous romantic lines from clas­sic movies. Other col­lec­tions cel­eb­rate the pop cul­ture of dec­ades past, the icons of music his­tory and the spirit of Cool Brit­an­nia – all top­ics close to the heart.

After I sent the team a note of encour­age­ment, Han­nah Macleod shared the company’s “simple little love story” with me. It’s also a story of smart, down-to-earth entre­pren­eur­ship. After fall­ing in love, the couple began work­ing together. Want­ing new art for their home, but not able to afford high-end prices, they decided to design their own rather than deign to buy mass-produced prints, and thus Coulson Macleod was born.

Start­ing small in March 2009, Han­nah and Mark didn’t have big dol­lars for pro­mo­tion, but built their own web­site and show­cased their designs online. The work spoke for itself, and with grow­ing sales they could soon begin advert­ising in top interi­ors magazines. Now, Coulson Macleod fields orders from all over the world, and tracks the buzz on their blog. Brides-to-be have con­tac­ted them to ask if they can read out the quote from the “What Is Love?” piece at their wed­ding – a spe­cial request as this was writ­ten by Mark.

As Han­nah described it to me, the com­pany is “built on love and driven by pas­sion”. The world needs more entre­pren­eurs like this. Here’s to spread­ing the Love.”

Yes, that’s right, Coulson Macleod is one today!

The idea to sell art popped into our heads just over a year ago. And by the 4^th March 2009 Coulson Macleod became an offi­cial business.

We launched our web­site on the 20^th, and cel­eb­rated our first sale of a lim­ited edi­tion print two weeks later. Now, in the nor­mal world of retail, two weeks would be rather a long time to wait for a cus­tomer. But at this stage you couldn’t have found us by search­ing on the inter­net. And we hadn’t advert­ised. We were ecstatic!

It’s been a bril­liant year.

We’ve shipped prints to far away lands. Aus­tralia. New Zea­l­and. Canada. And to prac­tic­ally every state in Amer­ica. Cus­tom­ers some­times buy more than one print at a time. Cus­tom­ers are com­ing back to buy more. For birth­day gifts, wed­ding gifts, or another print for their own walls.

So we’d like to take this oppor­tun­ity to thank all our cus­tom­ers. And to every­one all around the world who has taken the time to write about us. Whether you’ve just pos­ted an image of our art­work with a link back to us, or writ­ten a gush­ing wordy art­icle, we still get totally excited at see­ing our name out there.

We’ll be drink­ing a toast to our next year, which we’ve already got heaps of plans and designs for.

Cheers!