It’s our busiest time of year, creatively speaking. Many projects are in the pipeline but have not yet achieved thing-hood. For the past couple of years, there’s been an awful lot going on at Cambridge Imprint headquarters, like our unexpected warehouse move, and making new things has sometimes needed to fit into the interstices of whatever emergency is currently ongoing. Not this year. Apart form the ongoing wobbliness of Western civilisation, or whatever it is that is going on, which like everybody else we watch a bit anxiously from afar, no particular calamities have occurred this spring to throw us off: we have been having a marvellous time fiddling while Rome burns. Or to put a more positive spin on it: making hay while the sun shines.  The sun has indeed been shining, and England has been in a state of maximum, incandescent beauty for a couple of months. Feeling deeply thankful, we have been drawing, painting, cutting, sticking, sponging, stencilling, folding and threading, the better to drive British industry forward. Here you see what we hope are tantalising glimpses of coming attractions, to be unveiled later in the summer and early autumn. To make room for the new arrivals, we’re having a little sale.

Here you see Persephone mug samples in new Teal and Orange and Cool Pink and Lettuce colour ways, both of which we are very pleased with. We have only one of each at present and there is noticeable manoeuvring among us all at coffee time to gain possession. A good augury. The order is with our lovely two-man-band potters Peregrine Pottery in Stoke right now and we hope to take delivery in July. Watch this space. (A mention here of Fitzbillies, legendary Cambridge bun-makers, whose cinnamon croissant bun as seen here in a partially eaten state is in our opinion the very best bun available to humanity, vastly superior to the sticky Chelsea bun for which they are globally renowned. Crispy, chewy, flaky, not too sweet — the bun of power, which has now been folded into our studio and office routine in the form of Bun Thursdays. In some respects Western civilisation is achieving new heights.)

We’ve been constructing prototype merchandising units from cardboard and brown gummed tape and a lot of glue and paint. It’s remarkable what you can achieve with these simple materials. Perhaps in revolt at the chilly phrase ‘merchandising unit’, the prototypes have got fairly baroque: part toy theatre, part Tardis, part Brighton Pavilion, perhaps a splash of Leaning Tower of Pisa. There are some voices in the office who think we could maybe go with something a bit simpler. If this was made of wood, would one even be able to move it? they ask. A fair point, which is excellent as it means constructing another prototype. Never, never have I enjoyed making anything as much, not since the emergency small hours panics of World Book Day costume construction — creative outlet for all parents everywhere, may it never be cancelled, even though apparently nobody reads any more.

We’re incubating various new  paper chain ideas, plus a second round of the banqueting hats (‘party hats’ doesn’t quite seem to do them justice) that were so freakishly popular last year. The coronets will be a little less lofty, and therefore easier to post, than last year’s crowns. These too should be with us in July. You can see some of the many variations we flirted with here.

The studio has been festooned with a prototype Robin and Rowan garland for a couple of months: it should hit the press in a week or two.

Our new Kelp pattern papers have already achieved lift off: printed in April, they are now in stock in five glorious colour ways, including the excellently named ‘Boiled Egg’.

This pattern below has no name, and may never have one. Lots of things we make do get left in the end on the cutting room floor. But generating the colour swatches is an enjoyable ongoing project right now, and there seems to be no reason to stop…

To make way for these new things plus many others (we really have been extremely busy) we are having a little summer sale. The number of different patterns of Postcard Box and Pencil Pot was growing beyond exciting and into the zone of bewildering, so we’ve decided to cut back a little. There are Giant Scrapbooks and Boxes of Pencils that also need to go, and even some Pen Boxes — an item that we think is one of our very best pieces of desk storage, being both extremely handsome and extraordinarily useful. Everything is between 30 and 50% off. The Summer Sale starts this morning and goes on for as long as stocks last.

If you are in the US and wondering about the impact of tariffs on any order you might make, do not disquiet yourself, as they so charmingly say in France: orders under $800 in value from the UK do not at present attract a tariff and will sail through the border unscathed. This may well change so: carpe diem!