******Update

Since this post we have had two visitors to inkdish.com from Wyoming! One person from Laramie, Wyoming even stayed for 7 minutes. We couldn’t be happier and hope that all our friends from Wyoming come again soon . Don’t go the way of Jaques LaRamie (who LaRamie, Wyoming is named after) a French trapper who disappeared in the Laramie Mountains in the late 1810s and was never heard from again.

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It has been a busy stretch for us at Ink Dish. We had trade shows in Seattle, LA, and New York. We debuted Alyson Fox’s new collection. And we signed on two new artists, David Palmer and Dana Oldfather.

The combination of these events, strongly helped by some great press including Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy, has pushed our website well over 2,000 visitors in the last 30 days. I played around with Google Analytics and discovered that we have had visitors from 71 countries and 49 of the 50 states in the U.S.

I think we can do better. I’m talking to you Wyoming. Wyoming you were the only state we didn’t get a single visitor from in the last 30 days. So, I did some research to see if this was an anomaly. The World Championship Snowmobile Hill Climb is coming up March 25 and maybe everyone is busy practicing. But it got worse, on deeper investigation to the best of my knowledge we have never had a visitor from Wyoming to inkdish.com.

So, I am making a personal appeal. I am not asking for miracles, just for a little effort. We had two visits from Yemen in the last 30 days, I think Wyoming should at least be able to match that. Please Wyoming, check out Ink Dish, tell me what you think, and let’s work together to make sure everyone in the country has access to beautiful, designer tableware.

As I final push we have created the following precarious stack of Paul Timman dinnerware inspired by Devil’s Tower in Wyoming as a tribute. Devil’s tower is America’s first state park and famous for its prevalence in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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

Win free dinnerware from Ink Dish and Elle Decor. For the next two months the leading interiors magazine is running a sweepstakes to give three lucky (and trendy) winners a full service for four of Alyson Fox’s iconic Tug dinnerware. Enter here and check out the full details below.

“Adorned with inglaze decals in the signature ink-drawing style of Austin-based designer Alyson Fox, this quirky dishware is crafted from high-grade porcelain that is both dishwasher- and microwave-safe. Each winner will receive four complete place settings, including a 10″ dinner plate; a 7.75″ side plate; a 10 oz mug; and a 5.5″ dia, 18 oz bowl (total value: $288).”

3 winners

No purchase necessary.

Entry period February 18, 2010 Noon ET to April 19, 2010 Noon ET.

Enter Here

At Ink Dish we could definitely be described as being avid ‘foodies’ so when we found out we were going to be nestled amongst the delicious recipes at Fine Cooking magazine were were pretty chuffed to say the least. We were featured in their great finds section so thanks to associate editor Denise Mickelsen who as well as eating from Ink Dish plates was kind enough to pass on some cooking advice to me! At Ink Dish HQ we celebrated by cooking up the American classic of Mac n’ Cheese that looked so tasty on the front cover. You can read the article online here

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:

Hot Fruit Sandwich

Just in time for Thanksgiving the new Cookin’ with Coolio book is out on the shelves. When Coolio and his team needed dinnerware as funky as the chef they chose Ink Dish’s Irezumi pattern by Paul Timman.

“If you like to laugh, eat delicious food, and do it all on a budget, Cookin’ with Coolio is the ultimate cookbook for you.” – Craig Ferguson

Check out Irezumi adding color to Coolio’s hot fruit sandwich above and karate chicken below. In the book Coolio describes how the hot fruit sandwich was born:

“I was having a meeting with some TV executives in my house. I was gonna make them dinner and let ‘em know that I wasn’t f&#@ing around. But when they arrived, I was lookin’ over my menu and I hadn’t planned anything for dessert. So I tucked my head into the refrigerator and pulled out everything I could find. It ended up being delicious.”

To get the recipe pick up Cookin’ with Coolio. Thanks to Elan Gale for putting Ink Dish together with the “ghetto gourmet”.

Karate Chicken

Ink dish has gone international. Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto and Commissaires in Montreal are now both carrying Ink Dish modern dinnerware.

Art Gallery of Ontario (Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario) is one of the largest art museums in North America with 480,000 sq ft of physical space. 5 years ago AGO embarked on a $250 million redevelopment plan led by famed architect Frank Gehry.

Inside the building is housed “Massacre of the Innocents” by Peter Paul Rubens, “Christ Washing the Disciples’ Feet” by Tintoretto, and works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Sculptor Henry More among many, many others.

In the gift shop you can find works by such greats as Paul Timman.

Commissaires – is  a gallery, a museum and a design-forward gift shop, all in one.

“The idea was to sell design in another context – a store that acts as a gallery, said owner-curator Pierre Laramée, who opened on St. Laurent Blvd. near Fairmount St. four years ago as a rush of designers was putting Mile End on the style map. Works are typically shown for about three months, and are augmented by more accessible, permanent items like furniture, jewellery and scent. There are occasional photography exhibits, as well.” – Montreal Gazette

If you’re going to enter a new market, you might as well start at two of the top spots for design gifts in the country.

I’ve been asked a few times now how we put Paul’s artwork onto the plates so I thought I’d share it with everyone.

As anyone who’s been Inked can tell you, the tattoo starts it’s life as a drawing by the tattoo artist, it’s just an outline really. The artist draws onto a transferable paper and it becomes a stencil that goes onto your skin in the desired area. The magic begins when the artist puts needle to skin and blends colours and shades all free hand directly onto your flesh.

Tattooing plates was obviously a bit different. We were given the artwork as a basic stencil, and as beautiful and intricate as Paul’s drawings are we had to digitally add the colours and shading with photoshop. Paul’s drawing came with instructions on the various techniques and styles of shading and the colurs typically used in tattooing.  Once we had perfected that with the tattooists approval, the digital images were ready to send onto the factory for production and then that’s a whole other story for another time.

Ink Dish design director Caroline Pople became a cover girl this month thanks to Nouveau! Nouveau is a style supplement for HomeWorld Business magazine: a “leading business-to-business publication for the housewares industry”. For their fall 2009 issue the leading story was about how body art has become inspiration for new dinnerware designs.

Our very own Caroline Pople was interviewed about our Paul Timman tattoo tableware along with Jessica Rust who has also produced some tableware with tattoo type motifs on them. The issue was out in time for the New York Table Top show and it was nice to see a familiar face on the news stand in the basement of 41 Madison this year. We’ve had a great reaction to it so far and you can read the full article here.