Warning: This Post Contains a Serious Pillow

Don't say I didn't warn you.






This pillow features my "Méfiez-vous de la contrefaçon!" block print in gold and turquoise on grey cotton (a re-purposed men's shirt). The front also features two contemporary print fabrics in creams and teals. The reverse has a rustic, hand-woven Nepalese fabric with a stripe of funky turquoise faux-bois and subtle silver-on-violet block printed minouette label.





Dramatic light curtesy of skylights, living at 43°42′59.72″N and needing to get to work this morning.

Méfiez-vous de la contrefaçon!

I put another monotype Minouette print in the shop. For anyone wishing to have the one and only Minouette, on brown paper from India.

méfiez-vous de la contrefaçon!

I am often surprised by art work and its relative popularity. For instance, I am dumbfounded by the popularity of the chair and I never realized that Darwin still has an active fan club. I have no idea what is so speacial about this photo of my seahorse print and block or why it has so many fans. In hindsight though, I should have recognized the popularity of cats, especially, my one and only namesake. So, the cat print is in the shop by popular demand. It is not editioned, by the way, so it is unique (though there are other prints made with the same block, but with variations).

"Méfiez-vous de la contrefaçon!"

I bought this in Paris in 2001. It lives on my fridge. It makes me laugh - it is everything modern advertising is not: paranoid, long-winded and complicated. The slogan, "Méfiez-vous de la contrefaçon!" you might translate it as "Accept no substitutes" if you wanted to be snappy, but it is more like, "Be suspicious of counterfeits!" It goes on to explain that other manufacturers are trying to fool the buyer into thinking they are buying cat (Le Chat) brand with various other animal heads! Like what, I wonder? What sort of animal can one mistake for a cat? So to make their brand more identifiable they have added an octogon (which they go on to explain has eight sides...) etc.





You can spot counterfeits by such subtle clues as inverted letters.

This is a block print in black and turquoise on Japanese feathered Obonai paper and on Indian khaki recycled paper. Some are embellished in pen and ink. Some have chine collé.

Strangely, block printing roman characters is much harder than Chinese characters! I almost forgot the cédille and then, there was the 'N'. The brain does not want me to invert letters.
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In other news, I'm also watching a live broadcast from sea and texting with RM via Skype. Talk about multi-tasking.

GOOD NEWS: the old unplug it and plug it back in trick seems to have worked! But they want me to be available if they have questions.