Portia Batik - Portia Purse

P was the first word that she ever spoke and her brothers just started calling her that. The rest of the family soon followed and these days no one knows any different. After PIP graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, she bought a dilapidated old Victorian house on the outskirts of town. There was no longer any paint on the house and the garden was a wilderness, but PIP fell in love with it the moment she saw it. The house’s most unique feature, to her mind, was the intense northerly light that lit it up when the sun shone and that reminded her of the village where she was born. PIP created a studio in the attic of her house and dubbed it the PIP studio. If you ask PIP’s friends what she is like, they will give you the following answer, roughly speaking: “Pip is honest and genuine. She cannot stand injustice, it makes her blood boil; she has an unusually highly developed sense of ethics. PIP enjoys life to the full and, although she has a relaxed manner, when designing her creations she does her utmost, and then a bit more. As regards her work, she knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it and will go through fire and water to achieve it. While PIP does listen to the opinions of others – at least, those she respects – she will ultimately follow her own intuition and do what her heart dictates”. PIP designs products she would like to buy if she could find them, which is usually not the case. Her vision on her designs is actually quite simple, practical and sincere: “If I make a product, it has to be so good that I would like to keep it myself or if I give it to a friend or member of the family it must bring a little bit of joy and happiness. Without this emotion, it cannot be a true PIP product”. All PIP’s products must meet her motto;

‘Happy products for Happy People’. PIP gets her inspiration from every-day incidents that seem quite ordinary but when scrutinised more closely are, in fact, exceptionally beautiful. Once, on a lovely spring day in the park, she was moved by a wild rose in full bloom. She created a theme with roses originating from all over the world based on that single moment. Another time, she chanced upon a number of old suitcases and chests when she was decorating her attic studio and the contents of these chests became a nearly inexhaustible source of inspiration for her next collections. PIP’s style has a warm and almost intimate touchy-feely character. She often uses a mix and match concept with layered patterns and has a sharp eye for tiny details and special finishing touches combined with a subtle colour pallet. Moreover, a product is never ‘stand alone’, but always an element in a broader concept. PIP is busy bee who never stops; she is continually coming up with new ideas. This makes her a little restless since she has to get what she has thought up out of her system – to make room for new ideas all over again. In the relatively short time since she set up her studio, she has created the following collections:

A bed&bath collection of duvet covers, quilts, cushions, and bath and beach towels;
A line of school articles with stationery and schoolbags;
A line of notebooks, photograph albums, writing paper, and other attractive writing materials;
A collection of greeting cards including a number of Christmas and New Year cards;
A series of mugs for collectors;
An extensive collection of wallpaper;
Two versions of a breakfast service in green/blue and pink/red named ‘Lovebirds’;
A collection of tableware, table-cloths, runners and napkins for the ‘complete’ table;
A series of ‘home deco’ cushions;
A splendid collection of bags is expected in the spring of 2010. Most PIP products are available throughout Europe in the better specialist shops and chain stores. PIP is also currently attracting a lot of attention outside Europe. She is beginning to make a name for herself in Australia and is taking her first careful steps in America too. In a nutshell, PIP is conquering the world. Not that that is really PIP’s aim, but apparently her products touch the right emotional chords - universal ones. Her motto ‘Happy products for Happy people’ expresses that to a ‘T’.