Homegirl London pays homage to Darling Clementine. Quirky Norwegian duo Ingrid Reithaug and Tonje Holand are “Darling Clementine.” They create charming cute stationery and home products – trays, cushions and tableware – adorned with animals and floral graphics in unique bold colour designs.
They were destined to work together, both admiring the other’s work from afar and when they eventually did meet, it was magic – they both instinctively knew that combined they would produce something special. They may be based in Oslo, Norway but their wares are sold through shops in the UK, Europe, USA, Australia and Japan.
Their inspiration is drawn from classical Scandinavian design – Poul Henningsen and Finn Juhl to Marimekko, as well as international graphic design icons such as Paul Rand, Abner Graboff and Lora Lamm. They’re constantly developing ranges of new and exciting products for their business, as well as working on freelance design and illustration led projects for various clients, such as Kate Spade, Diplom-Is and the Norwegian National Opera. Ingrid and Tonje kindly answered some questions …
Q: Tell me more about how you met and why you decided to go into business together
A: Our meeting came about through fate. We were both admiring each other’s work a long time before actually starting to work together. After our first meeting, we both knew that this particular meeting would change our lives. We started up in a little cluttered room filled with vintage china and fairy lights and were very proud to move into our own office with a beautiful shop front with our name above the door last year. This year has been very special as we both have had our firstborn babies and we’ll be going back to work very shortly.
Q: How do you work together?
A: The way we work together is quite unique as one of us can start and the other one finishes an illustration. We have extremely similar views on aesthetic preferences and very seldom disagree on this aspect of our job. It’s wonderful to have someone who can visually read your mind!
Q: How would you describe your style?
A: Our carefully designed cards combine much attention to detail with humour and unique colour schemes. We have gone down the route of doing quite a few designs for children, which means drawing cute animals but we also love doing more classic illustration and drawing flora and flowers as well as collections of naive everyday objects in our own style.
Q: Will you be expanding your homeware collection?
A: New this spring is a wonderful bone china set of tableware for children called Little Wonders. For the Autumn we will be introducing a more grown-up, classic collection, hopefully with products varying from paper to interior and home products.
Q: What’s your favourite collection and why?
A: Our favourite collection to date is the Folk & Flora collection because it describes us more today, in comparison to some of the other older series that we designed 5-6 years ago.
Q: What’s your best seller?
A: Our bestseller is the series Marionette which we designed back in 2007, which has also been used by Danish home and interior label Ferm Living on products like cushions, wallpaper and bedding.
Below is a selection of their work, for further information on Darling Clementine and stockist details visit Darling Clementine. Credits: text by Homegirl London, images courtesy of Darling Clementine, special thanks to Ingrid and Tonje.
Little Wonders tableware for children
Woodland cushion
Folk and Flora cards
Marionette cards
Paris cards
