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Paper at the cutting edge

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Manchester Art Gallery - Entrance

Last weekend I went to the Manchester Art Gallery. Their current exhibition The First Cut is still open until 27 January 2013.

Wonder Forest (© Manabu Hangai 2012)

For this exhibition paper has been ‘cut, sculpted and manipulated’ into works of art. I’ll try to keep the number of photos in this blog post low, but that’s really difficult with so many exciting pieces of art made from paper.

Notice-Forest (Burger King) (© Yuken Teruya 2009)

Many pieces of art have been made from everyday objects. Japanese artist Yuken Teruya uses paper bags from different companies. Using a photo of a tree from the bag’s company’s country he then cuts the paper into the shape of this tree.

Big Wave Moving towards a small Castle made of Sand III (© Peter Callesen 2012)

Danish artist Peter Callesen uses normal sheets of A4 paper for his works of art.

Chaos City (© Béatrice Coron 2010)

Béatrice Coron uses Tyvek, a material similar to paper that is used instead of paper for some types of envelopes.

Fotoecken (© Sarah Birdgland 2012)

 

Sarah Bridgland uses second-hand ephemera to create her art.

 

Matemaatika (© Sarah Birdgland 2011)

 

The Harbingers (© Claire Brewster 2011)

Claire Brewster’s flock of birds is cut from vintage maps.

Going West scene (© Andersen M Studio 2010)

There were also several pieces of art cut from books.

Admission to The First Cut exhibition is free.There’s also a catalogue available and you can even buy limited edition artworks by selected artists.

 

The Manchester Art Gallery allows taking photos unless there are signs indicating that specific works may not be photographed. I did not see any signs indicating that the works shown in this blog post may not be photographed. I believe that the use of the images shown in this blog post falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.

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Meriful

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…and another post linked to Shanghai’s Fuzhou Road.This time about a shop called Meriful.

Meriful is quite different to the other shops you’ll find on Fuzhou Road. It is neither a cheap shop selling mainly Chinese-made stationery, nor is it one of those boutique-like shops selling a mix of “cute stuff” and designed, overpriced stationery of questionable quality. Instead you’ll find many items you might find in the online shops of the West, like JetPens, Cult Pens, bureauDIRECT or the less well known Deskstore.

Erasers...

Even though the shop is not too big you will find an incredible choice of exciting items. Just looking at the erasers – there must have been more than 100 different ones. Most items in the shop are imported from Asia, but you will also find European brands, like Rhodia (I bought the orange pad cover in Meriful) or Faber-Castell.

Midori Traveler's Notebooks

 

Meriful sells expensive designer calculators from Canon, but also affordable mechanical pencils from Redcircle (which are essentially fake Rotring pencils) as well as absolutely stunning handmade desk accessories from China (so beautiful, but so expensive).

Stationery by Carl

 

Imported items were usually about 50% more expensive than in their country of origin, but that isn’t too expensive, I thought. Other shops have similar mark-ups for imported stationery.

Carl Decorer Tape Dispenser

 

 

Their selection of items by Carl was amazing. The Decorer desk set (¥158, ~ $25 ; £15.60; €18.80) was unfortunately not available in the colour we liked, so my wife bought one of the Carl Decorer tape dispenser by itself, not as a set. It doesn’t feel as solid as it looks and it is a bit odd that the different materials have different shades of green, but overall it is a very nice tape dispenser.

 

Some of the items I bought in Meriful. The nice leather pen case is made in Korea.

Staff are very friendly and you can even negotiate the price if you find any issue with the products (previously opened, etc). When I asked for a new Rhodia pad cover from their stock they offered me a discount because they didn’t have any unopened ones left.

 

Price: December 2011

Exchange rates: March 2012

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Overpriced stationery in Shanghai

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There seem to be many different kinds of shops selling stationery in Shanghai.

 

There are the functional ones, selling stationery and other office supplies. Customers seem to be companies, but you’ll also find pupils there.

 

There are the fashionable ones. You’ll find them near universities. They do have some normal stationery, but seem to focus on cute stationery. They also sell make-up and girly things, too. The fashionable stationery is not always of high quality.

 

Queen's Market - selected by Tokyo

 

…and then there are the overpriced stationery shops. They are often located in shopping centres. They sell all sorts of expensive stuff. To be fair, the price is not only the shops fault. Many items, even though they have been made in China, have been reimported from Japan or Korea. I assume that even in Japan or Korea they are not cheap in the first place and someone has to pay for (re-)importing small numbers of them, which are probably not very economical. You can often find other items in these shops, like Monchhichis or iPhone docking stations.

 

Queen's Market - selected by Tokyo
You can see the Delfonics range behind the theft detector pedestal

 

One example of this kind of shop is “Queen’s Market – selected by Tokyo” in the new Shanghai Hongkou Dragon Dream Shopping Centre. Amongst other items they are selling Delfonics‘ Rollbahn range, Japanese stationery with German text printed on that sounds very much like it’s coming straight out of a Kraftwerk song.

These kind of shops often don’t survive very long. One reason might be that there are similar shops near the shopping centres which pay less rent and sell similar items cheaper – often copies or similar no-name products.

In the last five years or so the number of these overpriced stationery shops has gone up steadily.

 

 

I would like to thank Hui Liu for telling me about this new shopping centre in Hongkou. I would have not gone there otherwise.

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Our local pen shop is closing down…

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What a shame – my local pen shop, Platts of Preston, will cease trading end of next week. I bought a few nice pens there and my wife’s favourite pen for years, the Lamy Pico, was bought there. I overheard the shopkeeper telling another customer that the new lease for the shop would cost £800 per week – which might be acceptable for some locations, but to me sounds ridiculously expensive for a shop that is in the location this shop is in a city the size of Preston.

They will continue to trade at plattspens.co.uk and I wish them the best of luck for their future.

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Two years

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Unfortunately I’m still quite busy at work, but I am quite confident that I’ll be able to write new blog posts in the next few weeks.

Until then just two things I want to mention:

  • This blog is now two years old. I’m quite happy about this and hope that next year there’ll be many more blog posts. There are so many ideas I want to convert to blog posts… Some of them haven been in my hear for more than a year…
  • For anyone living in the UK: I noticed that Currys (at least in one of our Currys / PC World stores) started selling stationery. The items they sell are ridiculously cheap, e.g. Helix rulers for 7 pence (~ 11¢; 8c) or Stabilo GREENcolors sets, 12 FSC certified coloured pencils, for 80 pence (~ $1.26; 94c) – plus many more items.

 

Prices and exchange rates: November 2011

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