READER OFFER - The Art of Love
This Mothers Day give the gift of love through art with Frome’s print house Art of Illustrations. Find out how this local independent print company was born and grab the EXCLUSIVE Country Child reader offer in time for Mothers Day!
It was the arrival of the internet in the late nineties which made it possible for Julian Thomas to escape London. He was running an art consultancy business based in Fulham, placing prints, paintings and sculpture into offices and other commercial interiors. The routine of spending four nights a week in London and only three with his family at Pythouse Barn near Semley was becoming stressful, and he decided to take the downsize plunge. As part of the deal he retained the online business and set to work developing online galleries in two specific areas of subject-matter: Marine art and the art of illustration.
Julian comments “It was wonderful to be with my family full-time in the beautiful Wiltshire / Dorset borderlands and a relief that world-wide sales and low overheads made the whole thing work from the start” says Julian “I have always loved the magical world of children’s book illustration and found that limited edition prints by artists such as Quentin Blake, Ronald Searle and Shirley Hughes sold really well as birthday and Christening presents, and a sale to New Zealand was as easy as a sale down the road in Shaftesbury…”
In 2015 the family took on another derelict stone barn in the village of Lullington, near Frome, where after a somewhat interminable building project Art of Illustration and Art Marine ( www.artmarine.co.uk ) are now based, and prints and paintings can be viewed by appointment. Framing is carried out locally in Frome.