We have just finished photographing the first phase of Chapter 2 of G / H.

This week I want to write about smiling, oak bark dyeing of leather and one of our products that you might not have noticed yet. All of this is related in several ways.

First, we have just finished photographing the first phase of Chapter 2 of G / H. We’ve done three days in Wales and will do more in Scotland towards the end of April. It went well, I think.

We worked with two professional models, Katie and Tom, who are lovely.

I always wonder why it is vanishingly rare to see models smiling in photographs. Is it that fashion takes itself very seriously indeed, or is everyone sad in fashion, or a frown thought in some way to focus the audience on clothes not faces? No idea, but I think that everyone looks better when smiling; I mean, if you don’t feel like smiling then fine, but!

I hope that Katie and Tom had a good time working with us. We all had fun and we smiled a lot; the photos will prove that.

The day after we shot this campaign I saw a new Chanel video. It is everything that you might hope for from this brand; glamorous and elegant. But wait, there’s more, there are smiles! Lots and lots of deliberate SMILES! It is unbelievably refreshing. Fashion is big business, but it is also meant to be fun, frivolous, joy-filled.

Here’s the video. Don’t go down a rabbit hole, have a quick look and come back to us.

We photographed our new dog collar and lead collection. These are simple, very solidly made things, using British components and, thrillingly, they are bark dyed in Great Britain. As you may know, we are big fans of British craft. Together, Sarah, Caroline and I ran the craft tents at our festival The Good Life Experience; it was in this work that Caroline and I really got to know and admire Sarah. We worked with many, many different craftspeople but never with a leather dyer.

Last year’s masterful -seminal even- book Craft Land by James Fox has a fascinating section on oak bark dying. This set Caroline off on a hunt for someone to do this for us, which was, you guessed it, successful. And so, pretty soon we will have a new set of chic dog accessories of extraordinary provenance, utility and beauty.

You can buy Craft Land from us, by the way, here.

Finally, I wanted to show you our Hounds of Love notecards and highlight the provenance and beauty of these. The illustrations were made for us by the master Chris Brown, who is an artist, lino cutter and lecturer in fashion at St Martins. He was even an assistant to Edward Baldwin. Once Chris had created these, Caroline coloured them and they are then letter-pressed onto fine, heavy cotton paper in North Wales. We supply them in packs of five with matching envelopes. Buying these is a shot in the arm for British art and craft.