Yes, that’s right. Four. An unlucky num­ber if you’re Chinese. But not if you love Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art. Launched 1^st Septem­ber, our four new collections…

‘Wilde Grey’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art on reclaimed wood.

‘Wilde Blue’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art on reclaimed wood.

‘Wilde Red’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art on reclaimed wood.

‘Nap­kin Not Ser­vi­ette’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art.

‘Lunch Not Din­ner’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art.

‘Pud­ding Not Dessert’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made typo­graphic art.

‘Hel­vetica’. Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art on Vic­torian roof timbers.

‘Futura’. Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art on Vic­torian roof timbers.

‘Times’. Coulson Macleod’s typo­graphic art on Vic­torian roof timbers.

‘John Len­non’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made solid oak framed art.

‘Bob Dylan’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made solid oak framed art.

‘Keith Richards’. Coulson Macleod’s hand­made solid oak framed art.

Hand­made. Hand painted. Reclaimed wood. Dis­tressed typo­graphy.

So very Coulson Macleod. Unique. By design.

Hand­made. Hand painted. Reclaimed wood. Dis­tressed typo­graphy.

So very Coulson Macleod. Unique. By design.

Hand­made. Hand painted. Reclaimed wood. Dis­tressed typography.

So very Coulson Macleod. Unique. By design.

Coulson Macleod is now on Sheer­Luxe, the lux­ury shop­ping directory.

Sheer­Luxe, who say they are the defin­it­ive guide to lux­ury online shop­ping (and we agree), fea­ture such estab­lished and cool new brands as Liberty, Space NK, Astley Clarke, and Browns. And Sheer­Luxe invited us to join. How hon­oured are we?

One of the fea­tures of Sheer­Luxe is that mem­bers can cre­ate a Lust List. Back in May, we saw that we’d been added to Laura Colonnese’s Lust List. Laura, who is the Brand Man­ager at Eng­lish lux­ury goods brand Thomas Lyte, had also added Louis Vuit­ton, Solange Azagury-Partridge, and Jimmy Choo onto her Lust List. Now that’s my kind of shop­ping spree.

Then in August Sheer­Luxe sent out one of their Luxe Mails to all their mem­bers. The email news­let­ter, called Home is Where the Heart is, was only about Coulson Macleod.

We’re abso­lutely delighted to be part of SheerLuxe.

Today is a good day. Why? I hear you cry.

Well folks, we have beaten our sales record. We have sold more prints in August than in any other month in the entire his­tory of Coulson Macleod. And we’ve been up and run­ning for almost eight­een months.

We have a white­board on our office wall. Every time we make a sale we wipe off the old num­ber and write up the new one. I say we, but actu­ally I usu­ally do this, partly because my hand­writ­ing is neater, but mainly because it gives me a huge amount of pleas­ure. Every month we write down how many we’ve sold, whether they’ve been sold via Not On The High Street or through shops or if they’re bespoke and how many came via one of our adverts in Elle Dec­or­a­tion or Livin­getc.

We love our white­board. We quite often catch each other star­ing at it fondly. Because every month the fig­ures go up. And that is super exciting.

And this month, only half way through August I might point out, we’ve notched up the biggest num­ber since our records began. To let you into a secret, we only star­ted record­ing this on the board since Novem­ber, which was when we star­ted selling in ser­i­ous num­bers and the idea of a white­board sprang into our heads.

So ladies and gen­tle­men, tonight we may clink our glasses and say a little toast to our little boom­ing busi­ness that we love so much.

As well as design­ing very cool typo­graphic art col­lec­tions, we, that’s Couslon Macleod, can also cre­ate per­son­al­ized art just for you.

Just to show you some examples of our bespoke art…

This one, using our ‘Winter Trees’ as a base, was cre­ated for one of our customers…

… who then wrote us this amaz­ing testimonial,

“I’d been inter­ested in Coulson Macleod’s work after see­ing it in the press, and hav­ing dis­covered via their web­site that they also do bespoke work, I sug­ges­ted an altern­at­ive word­ing. We dis­cussed a treat­ment, I was sent an image for pre approval and five days later a fant­astic and unique piece is now hanging in our home. I could not be more delighted with the fin­ished piece of work whilst the ser­vice offered was noth­ing short of brilliant.”

Isn’t that nice?

A close-up of the bespoke art based on our Winter Trees collection.

Our bespoke per­son­al­iz­a­tion ser­vice can also be based on our rough-sawn solid oak-framed ‘Love’ prints, like this one…

All you have to do is pick a sim­ilar num­ber of words and sen­tences that you want to incor­por­ate, and we do the rest.

So if you’d love to own a one-off piece of art that has been cre­ated just for you, or you need to find a truly unique gift, then just click on Coulson Macleod. Simple.

Related art­icles:

• Bespoke Typo­graphic Art
• Coulson Macleod Gets Personal

“What is love?

To solve that riddle with just one answer is bey­ond me, for love is many dif­fer­ent and con­tra­dict­ory things.

In the early stages love is excite­ment and breath­less­ness, it is the ache of sep­ar­a­tion and the com­fort of togeth­er­ness, and it builds inex­or­ably to that moment when ‘I’ becomes ‘we’.

Later, if blessed, love becomes a stronger, less trans­it­ory thing, a found­a­tion for two lives lived as one.

It is all around us, there for the tak­ing, yet to seek it out is futile.

It can­not be bought or stolen or given.  It can­not be avoided or denied.

Love is the beau­ti­ful, won­der­ful, mys­ter­i­ous mor­tar that binds two souls together and I first heard its voice on the day I met you.

It has been with me every moment since.

This is what love is.”

Love Birds card cour­tesy of Ruby Wren

Writ­ten by Coulson Macleod.

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.

Coulson Macleod is fea­tured in this month’s issue of Easy Liv­ing Magazine.

Our art­work ‘Love Makes The Ride Worth­while’ is on page 11 on the Editor’s let­ter page. Susie For­bes says, “Finally — this Coulson Macleod panel (£149) with its sweet and poignant mes­sage takes us right back to feel­ing the love — and let’s face it, there’s noth­ing quite like it!”

So thank you very much Susie For­bes, Editor of Easy Liv­ing. You have great taste!