We are MASSIVE Timorous Beasties fans here at The Pink House. We're wild for the Glasgow-based design studio's beautiful Butterflies wallpaper (it's in our master bedroom), totally in love with their London Toile (it's plastered all over the dining room), and if we ever find ourselves with a vintage sofa that needs re-covering, we wouldn't say no to their Bloomsbury Garden fabric (pic below).
And we're not the only ones who have fallen for Timorous Beasties' beautiful and slightly bonkers take on nature. Yesterday, Penguin Books launched The Birds and the Bees, their new Vintage Classics collection, with covers designed by - yup - Timorous Beasties, and set the literary world a-buzz (sorry).
'We knew we wanted to ask Timorous Beasties very early on,' says Penguin editor Charlotte Knight. 'Their designs, not to mention their name, seemed a perfect match. Much of their work is inspired by the natural world. But it's not just pretty - it has an irreverent edge.'
Timorous Beasties co-founder Paul Simmons says the background for the book designs worked very much like some of their wallpapers. The main designs were inspired by natural history books, with Paul making particular reference to James John Audubon's Birds of America: 'The tiny, hand-coloured, beautifully printed plates were a great inspiration,' he says.
The books themselves are nature writing at its best, with stories such as 'H is for Hawk', which recounts Helen Macdonald's true tale of her struggles as she tried to train her own wild goshawk. But the covers are works of art in their own right, so even if you didn't read a word, they'd style up your coffee table perfectly.
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