Sherman’s Travel Magazine has built up a circulation of almost half a million readers on the concept of “smart luxury.” That’s a concept that we can relate to and thus, we were thrilled to be featured in their latest  issue.

Bring Back

“Tattoo world deity Paul Timman brings his intricate art to the dinner table”.

click to enlarge

Check out the Summer 2010 issue on newsstands now or visit their website to learn more about affordable luxury from Irezumi dinnerware to how to get half off stays on Nantucket Island.

Ink Dish and Paul Timman’s Cherry Ink pattern got a great shout out in today’s New York Post. Celebrity Chef Chris Stanton, judge on the food channel’s Chopped and proprietor of the Stanton Social Club was featured along with his stylish abode in the paper.

photo by Elizabeth Lippman

Chris and Taryn Santos’ Favorite Things: The couple’s wedding china, a pattern called Cherry Ink, designed by tattoo artist Paul Timman.

You can spot the mug and bowl in the photo and read the quote and the entire article at the NY Post.

If your in NYC check out The Stanton Social Club and make sure you save room for dessert. The puddings are amazing.

One of the best things about tableware is the lovely things people eat off your wares. We’re thrilled to be a small part of the London food scene by providing a backdrop for some beautiful grilled squid.

Now that summer is upon us, the barbeque gets a serious firing up. A perfect way to spend a lazy Saturday or Sunday, I sometimes struggle to see past the usual burgers, steaks, chicken drumsticks and kebabs. Often it can turn into a total meatfest. Recently though, we’ve been a bit more creative.

Read the whole story and see the goods from Lizzie Eats London.

We are thrilled to be back in Elle Decor. The last time we partnered with ED we received over 125,000 entries for Alyson Fox’s tug pattern. 125 thousand! I thought it was a typo at first.

Elle Decor is the ultimate guide to decorating and design and we are exicited to hear them describe Cherry Ink as a way to, “add a burst of blooms to the table with this pretty service for four”.

The Cherry Ink porcelain dinnerware set offers a fresh take on traditional botanical patterns. The collection was designed by tattoo artist Paul Timman, whose soft, painterly strokes evoke springtime cherry blossoms.

Enter to win a service for four before May 21st and it’s too late:

ElleDecor.com

We have too many new designs and need your help choosing which to produce.

Our design director Caroline has been working non-stop with Dana Oldfather, David Palmer, and Paul Timman to create some cutting-edge patterns.

What comes out when you put two modern artists together with a tableware veteran? Click on the link below to see! As you know from the previous surveys we decide what to produce based directly on your picks – so get in there and let us know what’s what!

Click here to see the preview/survey

*If you are a retailer or sales rep email me for a password to the industry survey.

One of our favorite things about creating dinnerware is the fact that you eat off them. Our design director Caroline’s brother Chris Pople is one of the foremost food bloggers in London. Chris has been featured in the Guardian newspaper, his Cheese and Biscuits is one of the most popular food blogs in the U.K., and he even hosted a talk on mangos for a foreign embassy (even though he doesn’t really like mangos).

If you are ever heading to London be sure to have a read through Cheese and Biscuits before you book a meal. And if your interested in taking a butchery course while you’re there read his latest post and see the results on an Irezumi Dinner plate.

“One year ago, the challenge dinnerware start-up Ink Dish set for itself was to produce designer dinnerware for less than $100 per place setting. The company’s target market is young urban professionals, or people buying their first home, who want to invest in edgy, fashion-focused dinnerware that is priced affordably.

Caroline Pople, Ink Dish’s design director, grew up with the gentle traditions of English tableware. Her mother, Julie Pople, has been in the industry for nearly 30 years designing for the top names in Staffordshire and Limoges. After earning a degree in silversmithing and allied crafts at the London Metropolitan University, Pople teamed up with her mother. Together, they worked for Royal Doulton, Lenox, Villeroy and Boch, and Oneida, to name a few.” Read the full article in Ceramic Industry Magazine

Ink Dish was born from a project developed at the Cass Business School in London. I chose Cass because, although the MBA program is top ten in U.K. and ticks all the boxes for accounting and economics, it also encourages creativity which can often easily be overlooked amongst all those spreadsheets.

Recently, I was interviewed for the alumni news publication.

What is your most treasured memory of your time at Cass?
The trips to China and Poland were fantastic, but if I had to pick one memory it would be the sinking ship exercise in Portsmouth (photo above). We were all still getting to know each other and were thrown into a situation that was so foreign to many of us: a naval training exercise where you’re waist deep in water hammering shims into leaks in the hull of a massive iron boat.

Read the full interview on the Cass Business School Website:

At Ink Dish we bring the talents of contemporary artists to a new medium by creating beautiful, functional dinnerware. In doing so we get to partner with some really inspiring retailers. At the top of that list is the shop at the Walker Art Center. The Walker is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is considered one of the nation’s “big five” museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn.

We love working with museums because we all speak to the same people. Our customers love design. They love art. They love typography. They love fashion. They love creativity. The Walker’s mission is to be: “a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences, examines the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities.” – I wish I had said that.

The next time you viist the twin cities, The Walker Art Center is on a 17 acre urban campus that includes both buildings and parks. If you get there before November 29th you can go see  Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay. Our molded clay hasn’t made it inside any museum exhibitions yet, but we’re trying… In the meantime you can see Impulses That Form Clay in the museum and our functional adaptation of clay in the Walker’s shop.

Running a business can be a bit overwhelming. A lot of the time the hardest part is knowing where to start. Neither Caroline or I had ever exhibited at a trade show before and the logistics of conceptualizing the booth, creating the pieces, and then getting it from the shop to the middle of the Javits Center in Manhattan was overwhelming to say the least.

Luckily, Billy Crosby owner of Crosby Design is good friend and a great guy. Billy worked with Caroline to create a booth that did our products justice and didn’t cost so much that we had to switch to making paper plates.

The best part of the experience is the cool 3D fabricating machine in his studio. We sent Billy a .jpg of our logo, he plugged it into the machine and created a gorgeous three dimensional rendering of the Ink Dish logo. A little black paint and some stickum and we had fantastic centerpiece to our signage.

You can see a picture of the negative space left over below or check out more behind the scenes pictures on Flickr