Visiting Fanny Shorter's creative studio
When it comes to watch design, we love to collaborate with talented artists and illustrators.
Fanny Shorter has designed several watches for us over the last few years, each one proving more interesting and creative.
Previous designs by Fanny Shorter for Mr Jones Watches.
Fanny describes herself as a “designer and printmaker”.
I’d say that the best way to explain the style of Fanny’s work is English. Think typical English countryside, but with modern vibes and bright, vivid colours.
Sounds beautiful, right?
Her design goal is charmingly simple, she’s putting her own contemporary twist on natural English illustrations.
A sample of Fanny’s artwork from her website.
Before we visited her design studio, I did the obligatory investigation of Fanny’s Instagram profile (check it out – you’ll love it).
As a result of this, I was imagining a huge open space, filled with traditional English decor and a big team of people traipsing round with mounds of fabric in their arms.
Ok maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but in my mind, I think I was expecting to be visiting the fabric floor of Liberty London, rather than a creative studio.
Fanny’s Instagram account: @fannyshorter
In reality, Fanny shares her central London studio space with four other creative businesses at Cockpit Arts.
It was probably one of the most organised studios we’ve visited so far, and her space is bursting with colourful prints, delicate drawings and design work.
Fanny Shorter in her studio
It’s quite an experience visiting a creative studio, you get a real sense of the creative process, and of course you get a peak at all the things that don’t make it to Instagram.
Although Fanny now has some help with screen printing her fabrics, all of her design work, business and marketing is run from this small, beautiful space, single-handedly.
While we were there, we got to see some of her previous design work: tiny hand painted birds and fish, and illustrations that are screen printed for soft furnishings.
This year, we were lucky enough to get to work with Fanny again, on the design of The Promise of Happiness.
The miniature illustration on this watch was painted by hand, and Fanny cleverly designed the watch so the time was camouflaged within the tigers stripes.
Although it’s pretty unusual for the time to be secondary to the design, it’s perfect for Mr Jones Watches.
You can watch Fanny talking through the design here.
We’re always on the look out for illustrators, designers and makers to collaborate with. Do you know any unusual creatives’ that would be up for the challenge? Leave your suggestions below, or send an email to: info@mrjoneswatches.com
