On Sat­urday, we (yes the entire com­pany of Coulson Macleod — that’s both Coulson & Macleod) hopped on the train and trav­elled down to London.

Liberty Lon­don had opened their doors for their Best of Brit­ish Design Open Call.

We’d atten­ded Liberty’s Best of Brit­ish back in April. And Liberty liked what they saw. But gave us an indic­a­tion that there were a couple of prints that they’d like more. And obvi­ously these weren’t the prints that we had car­ried down.

So off we went again. Second time lucky perhaps?

We waited for what seemed like an age in the hot rafters of the Liberty store. Ten­sion mount­ing. The beau­ti­ful people of Liberty scur­ried around with timers and clipboards.

Whilst we waited we chat­ted to some lovely tal­en­ted folk. One lady designed glass bowls. Another lady was a fash­ion designer.

Ed Burstell, Liberty’s Man­aging Dir­ector, passed right by us. Which made us even more nervous.

Finally it was our moment to pitch.

This time, not one, but two buy­ers were wait­ing for us.

And you wouldn’t believe who they were…

Michelle Alger. And Faye Too­good.

Now if you’re not par­tic­u­larly into who’s who at Liberty (and why would you be?) then these names won’t mean much. But you may have seen Ed and Michelle on BBC 2’s Britain’s Next Big Thing.

Michelle is the Buy­ing Man­ager for Homeware.

Faye Too­good is an interior styl­ist with her own stu­dio. And is BIG news. She does reg­u­lar con­sultancy work for designer Tom Dixon. She’s designed Liberty’s win­dows. She did a refit of Dover Street Mar­ket’s shoe depart­ment. And she’s cur­rently design­ing parts of the new Sel­fridges Hotel, due to open in 2012.

And they loved our art. They weren’t just being polite. They really loved it. Michelle Alger said that she’d never seen any­thing like it before. And she’s seen everything.

Amaz­ing!

But. And sad to say there is a but. Our typo­graphic art pieces are just not right for Liberty.

How­ever, they did tell us who they thought would like to stock Coulson Macleod art. And that, my friends, is who we’re con­tact­ing next. Watch this space.

Related art­icles:

• A Big Night Out With Jamie
• Keen As Mustard

It’s my birth­day today, and yes, I’m an April Fool!

I’ve been sal­iv­at­ing over the Ginkgo print from Daniel Baer since I first saw it, flick­ing through the graphic design magazine Grafik. This morn­ing I unwrapped my gift from Coulson, and Ta Da!

A gor­geous A3 poster of ginkgo leaves by the super-talented Daniel Baer.