Gladstone's Luxury Dry Goods
I want to tell you about our latest launch, this time on our estate Glen Dye in Kincardineshire. Last week Caroline and I cut the ribbon on Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods, which is an open studio where nearly everything is for sale.
It is our studio/workspace. It is not a shop. It is something much freer and more interesting. It’s about fun, discovery and entertainment.
There is a lot to see (in a small space), and Gladstone’s will offer visitors a chance to touch, feel, experience and get to know everything that we make/sell; from books to jumpers, honey to luggage, prints to crockery, vintage goods, postcards, books and on and on. There will be a selection of things from Gladstone / Hellen as well from the OURS range that we make and sell in Wales, our Some Good Ideas range from lockdown, the Glen Dye range, and our personal vast collection of vintage stuff too. There will be exhibitions and we will kick off with work by our long-term collaborator and friend Gail Bryson.
This space will bring our work, and that of invited guests, to life.
My original idea was to create the sort of revelatory space that one used to occasionally stumble across when ambling around in the countryside on holiday; something unexpected and surprising, a country store, tiny museum or gallery. I gave our graphic designer Rhys this brief; ‘It will be the country store of your dreams’.
Nowadays everything is online and surprises of this nature are very rare. Once upon a time, driving through a village in, say, Upstate New York or the Highlands, one might just pass something interesting-looking, slam on the brakes, reverse and explore.
We have created a space that is wilfully old-fashioned and analogue, and we hope that as such it will delight visitors who can look around, hang out, flick through books, see what we do, buy stuff, not buy stuff, type up a letter, fiddle with things.
Residents at Glen Dye will be given a magnetic key fob to open the door if we aren’t around, and anyone else can call for an appointment. You may know that we already have an honesty/self-serve general store at Glen Dye. We are believers in the mutual trust that exists between us and our supporters.
Gladstone’s does have a website, but it is possibly the simplest one you will visit this year. Gladstone’s Luxury Dry Goods.
We don’t have an email address. We were in Florence to see the Rothko show last week and I found it so reassuring that we had to call restaurants for reservations rather than use OpenTable or Resy. Maybe you can understand why.
Do call us with any questions. And as you know, I will come back to you if you reply to this. Letters of enquiry would be fun too, if you feel like it. We will write back.
I’ll show you more soon. Until then, all my best. Let’s keep fighting for a better world and try not to get too down about the Crap Fest around us
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