For our china anniversary we created twenty plates that pay tribute to the people, ideas and general madness that have shaped the past two decades. Each plate resurrects an idea that has left a mark on the studio’s memory.

For Imagistmas this year, we invite you to choose a plate of your own.

Each plate is handmade by our friend, Sally Marien, from her studio in West Sussex. They are made from unglazed porcelain and measure 20cm x 20cm.

CHICKEN OR EGG

The idea always comes first.

PICK ME

FROM NOTHING TO MORE THAN NOTHING

The creative act. From Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies.

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NOT BUILDING A WALL BUT MAKING A BRICK

Another Oblique Strategy that defined our thinking: Trust the process. Look to the next step not to the result.

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BALANCE

The tension between triumphant glory and abject failure.

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THE DISNEY METHOD

Structure and methodology is the foundation of creativity.
All we need is a framework to play with.

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SMILEY

Look for humanity wherever you walk.

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URSA MAJOR

Infinitely curious, infinite curiosity.

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RULE 8

Sister Corita Kent reminds us every day in the studio that one cannot be all things at all times.

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PLAY

A reminder to introduce some chaos into your thinking from the Oulipo movement, the masters of play. In the N+7 game you replace every noun in a sentence with the noun seven places down in the dictionary.

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SLOBS

We couldn't make plates without a plateful of the fuel of our creativity: hobnobs.

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SEEING COMES BEFORE WORDS

The place where each of us started: the opening line of John Berger's Ways of Seeing.

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MATCH

The Fluxus movement took a match to everything we thought we knew as art. All experience is art. Chance, accident, and absurdity is art. Art is a process not a result.

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A TIDY ROOM IS A TIDY ROOM

Our first studio project and foray into Imagism. Not everything needs to represent something else. Sometimes, simplifying everything and taking away the frills is all that's required.

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THE APPARITION OF THESE FACES IN THE CROWD: PETALS ON A WET, BLACK BOUGH

A poem by Ezra Pound, founder of the Imagist movement.

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OLD SPITALFIELDS MARKET

'Lemons the size of hand grenades...' Part of a passage we commissioned in 2007, by Jeanette Winterson, for an installation in our first home, Old Spitalfields Market.

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BERMONDSEY STREET

A memento mori to our studio which suffered four break-ins and taught us the art of letting go.

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MYSTIC ROSE

From a gift of a Tarot reading came a studio project to create our own 'Death Card' which featured this 7-pointed mystic rose.

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WOLFGANG

A love letter to listening and to our sister company, Radio Wolfgang, a podcast production house who shared our studio space (and our lunches) between 2014 and 2020.

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RIPPLE

Do not underestimate the power of ideas.

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NOTHING WASTED

Our final tribute is to the fragments of ideas that get left behind.

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