Fly, Fly Away!

As much as we've loved having our Hargrave Cellular Kite in the studio window the last couple of months, it's time for us to say goodbye! It certainly cheers the place up and is always a talking point for visitors to our studio, but sadly we just don't have the room anymore.....

So...we're asking if you or anyone you know has a love for beautiful, brightly printed kites?! These kites are based on the early meteorological kites of the late 1800s and built to the exact dimensions that they would have been constructed to for kite experiments back in 1894! There are five Bowed Eddy Kites and one Hargrave Cellular Kite, all featuring a unique print inspired by the way we have recorded wind over the years.

The fabric was all lovingly printed by hand in our studio using paper stencils. All kites were on show at The Lighthouse as part of our show "When the wind is high" during October and November 2012.

We are only looking to cover the cost of their production, so if you want to own your own piece of a one-off Laura Spring, then this is your chance!

Due to the size and delicate nature of the Hargrave Cellular Kite, we cannot ship or post it anywhere. It will need to collected from the studio directly. The Bowed Eddy Kites can easily be posted though....

If you are interested or want to know more details, then please get in touch at: hello@lauraspring.co.uk

Five Bowed Eddy Kites & the Hargrave Cellular Kite (just seen on the right edge)

Arrow Bowed Eddy Kite

Compass Bowed Eddy Kite & Hargrave Cellular Kite

Hargrave Cellular Kite

Compass Bowed Eddy & Hargrave Cellular Kite

Thank you!

In the archives of the Science Museum...

One of the things I love about being a designer is the strange places and worlds your ideas can take you. Recently I was lucky enough to be able to access the Science Museum archives as I had been researching a particular idea for my upcoming exhibition at The Lighthouse.  It turns out that the Science Museum has a whole room dedicated to meteorological equipment dating back to at least the 1800s which was perfect for my line of enquiry....

I am quite a lover and collector of old things, as I know are many people. I love looking at objects from a previous decade or era and thinking about how they would have been used and the story behind each piece. So to be able to go into the archives at the Science Museum  and see beautiful objects from their collection was a bit of a dream come true. As soon as you step off the street in the west end of London and enter the beautiful old building that houses the majority of their smaller pieces, you feel like you've stepped back in time. The building itself used to be the Post Office Savings Bank and it has corridors and staircases that make you think you've walked onto a film set - in fact, the lovely staff member that assisted my visit said the place is often hired by film companies to shoot scenes (it turns out I missed a hollywood legend by a day!).

As we walked down beautiful corridors, turning on lights as we went, it felt like a real privilege to be somewhere so special. As we walked into the room I wanted to access, I was immediately hit by the smell of old stuff. Putting on latex gloves, I was then given free reign to touch and photograph the objects I had requested. The bonus of the trip was that I could also look amongst the shelves at all the other objects and pull out things I hadn't requested, but appealed to me, which was a welcome surprise.

Twelve months ago I had limited knowledge about weather related things, but now I feel like I am becoming a bit of a weather geek. This is one of the reasons I love what I do, the weird knowledge you accrue is sometimes bizarre but it's also funny to think about how excited you can get over a Vertical Gustiness Meter from 1882.

Vertical Gustiness Meter