Auf meinen Oslo Trip letzten Winter habe ich mich auf dem Designer-Weihnachtsmarkt in die Arbeit von zwei Norwegerinnen verliebt, die unter dem Namen Darling Clementine bezaubernde Dinge herstellen. Tonje und Ingrid haben sich netter Weise bereit erklärt, ein paar Fragen zu beantworten, so dass Ihr die beiden etwas näher kennen lernen könnt. Ich hoffe, english is ok for you?
1. Who are you and what is your business?
We are Norwegian designers Tonje Holand and Ingrid Reithaug, and together we are Darling Clementine. We design stationary, mostly greeting cards, for all occasions. We sell our products to shops in Europe, Australia and the States.
2. Where do you find inspiration?
We find inspiration in lots of things, but probably most from the past. We love everything from the classic clean aesthetics of the Bauhaus to the more decorative periods like Art Déco. We love the quirkiness of Eastern European animation and the cuteness of Disney, but most of all we are inspired by our Scandinavian design heritage.
3. How does your typical work day look like?
Our work day always starts with a nice cup of coffee and a little update on what we need to do. Then we put on some nice music and start working.
4. What is your favourite part of your job and what do find difficult?
The favourite part of our job is of course that we are two great friends who get to work together every day! We laugh a lot at work and have fun with what we do, creating new characters and little stories for them to fit into. We also love that we get to set our own tasks most of the time, and that we can decide what style we want to work in next.
The difficult bit is definitely the part where when you run your own business – nothing comes easy. If you don´t do the job, it doesn´t get done. It´s as simple as that. But you do get used to this and at the end of the day, it just makes you into a more responsible person who can do lots of things!
5. Do you have a bestseller product?
We do have some bestseller designs, and funny enough it is one of the very first designs we did. It is a Christmas card we made with a very cute deer that stands in a heap of snow, looking very sweet. Everyone loves a big eyed deer around Christmas it seems.
6. Is DIY also a big thing in Norway?
DIY is a big thing in Norway, yes. We started out making all our products by hand, we did everything from hand stamping them to cutting and gluing them together. Luckily, business got busy and we could no longer keep up with making everything ourselves. We still do some DIY projects like screenprinting canvas bags and cards, just cause we love the feeling you get from a handmade object. We now print all our cards at a printers, but we still want our products to have some of that handmade feeling in it. Hopefully we succeed.
7. What is your tip to new handcrafters?
Our tip would be that you should have fun with what you create. That way the job never gets tired.
8. What project would you like to realize if money didn´t matter?
If money was of no matter it would be easier to produce products on a larger scale. We would also love to produce more stationary products like boxed cards and notebooks.
Thank you for the interview and good luck for the future!
Anna aus Berlin
