Pepe's Blog

London’s Selfridges store dazzled the world recently with the announcement of the Wonder Room. The Wonder Room is actually a 19,000 square-foot space that is dedicated to luxury items, fine jewelry, wine and other precious gifts from top brands like Hermes and Bulgari, mixed with quirky but always sumptuous work from new names on the design scene. Ahem! That means us! We are delighted that our posh but friendly little gang of Flatface figurines are now strutting their stuff in the prestigious Oxford Street shop.

Flatface figurines in situ at the Wonder Room. The concept store takes inspiration from the tradition of the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities.

We were are so chuffed about this picture. Pepe and Friends in all their glory mixed in with other happy and beautiful things. We didn’t even know we were in this article, a really nice person sent it to us in the post. Those people at the Observer really captured the Vinila spirit with this one.

These girls dressed up as fairies and bumble bees for a night on the town. No, it wasn’t Halloween or anything. They looked so cute it made us smile.

Lady Rara insisted I take her to the park. It was bitter cold so she hung out in my coat pocket during the walk there. Suddenly the sun came out and we both did a happy dance, and immediately befriended some children. Good times.

We are so happy that Pepe and Friends tableware is finally available on our site and we just had to show you what the espresso cups look like when you put them together as a group. Each cup is different in shape as well as pattern, the saucers have different patterns too. Go to the Pepe and Friends section in the shop to see more. We call these guys the Birdies. Sweet.

Our little Flatfaces were so excited to strut their stuff at Partridge Fine Art during Design Week this September. Partridge Fine Art is a very posh antique dealer on New Bond Street in London. Everybody working there wears impeccable suits and speaks the Queens English beautifully. The Flatfaces found themselves in their element and were especially impressed by a Louis XV table worth 1,000,000 pounds (not kidding, it really was 1,000,000 pounds). We were invited to exhibit at Partridge Fine Art by The Fuse Collective. The exhibition was a mix of fresh works by up and coming designers against a backdrop of antique beauties.

Flatfaces in the window at Partridge Fine Art on New Bond Street in London. Work it!

Inside the exhibition. Pictured here are Wendy and Michael, the founders of the Fuse Collective. They worked really hard to make it all happen.

Lady Raras behaving badly on a rare regency mahogany writing desk. Decorum ladies!

Cat McKee, a lovely Fuse designer on an Ismini Samanidou day bed.

Pippy wandered off to relax.

After all that champagne and dainty appetizers, the Flatfaces felt the need to prove their cool factor, so they were keepin it real at Designers Block in Handle With Care, an exhibition curated by the design gurus at Designboom (how many times can you say the word DESIGN in one sentence?). And everybody knows that Designersblock is just too cool for school.

160 of the quirkiest ceramic creations by designers from 35 countries.

Flatfaces making friends at Designersblock.

We really enjoyed Designersblock Illustrate, an event showcasing exciting UK illustrators. Here are some pictures:

A kind of erotic character mural by the amazingly talented people at Airside. When you go up close to the mural there are small holes showing animations on a screen. Clever.

Richard Hogg is a really nice guy and he makes fantastic blue creatures. They look so good on concrete.

This mural was created by the boys at The Daydream Network. Here Mark (I think that is his name) adds his own personal touch, proving that pink is not just for girls.

We went to Germany to meet up with Rosenthal and work on new additions to ‘Pepe and Friends’ our tableware collection. We had the pleasure of working in their swanky Bauhaus design studio in the middle of a forest!

This is Kirsten, a lovely designer at Rosenthal, pictured with Sir Randolf the eggcup. We can’t decide who’s cuter.

We only just got this blog up and running but we had to upload a very cool thing we did last October. We went to Pictoplasma, a bi-annual character design conference in Berlin. We attended lectures by some amazing artists. Inspirational.

Derek Hodgson and I admiring each other hair styles. Derek had an opening a gallery in Berlin, part of the Pictoplasma festival. See his wonderful green creatures on the wall behind us.

Just outside the conference room were huge rolls of paper and drawing materials and soon a mass drawing session took place.

The festival ended in a performance featuring characters created some of the invited artists.

The guys that organized Pictoplasma are so thoughtful. They supplied everybody with materials for making your own character costume. Gavin made a kind of monster mask complete with a twin. Awww.

I made a fluffy tail, great for shaking my booty in style, which was perfect timing cause there was a character karaoke party afterwards. Notice the white floor (which later turned into a dance floor), it got drawn all over in lovely scribbles by hundreds of people. It was like being a kid again!

My brother Tim made me this pie cause he said I wasn’t eating properly, he came all the way up from his little village by the sea in Cornwall, down in the far south west of England which is a good six hour drive away, and he got all this good nutritious stuff and created the first Pepe Pie! - don’t worry he didn’t actually put Pepe in it!

We formed a mini collective with 3 talented designers and called it Small Factories. We all showed our stuff in Milan at the Salone Satellite.

People were loving the Flatfaces, taking pictures, picking them up and smiling a lot.

One night we stumbled upon a legion of Italian football fans celebrating their win. There was electricity in the air.

It was really nice to meet loads of shiny happy people. Thanks to everybody for being so great to us, especially the guys from Small Factories!