Radiance is for sale!

Big news!  I am looking to sell Radiance, as a business. 

I love my  little shop BUT over the last couple of years, since moving my studio out of the premises and adding wallpapers and fabrics to my collection I have become distracted. It's become one thing too many and too much to manage well...and you all know I'm a bit of a perfectionist so I hate not being able to keep up and be able to really give Radiance the attention that it needs. All I really want to do you see is concentrate on my own work and develop my collection. That is where my passion lies.

Radiance is ten years old this September (I hope you'll come and celebrate with us when the time comes) and it is a thriving little business. It is a big part of the community of independent shops in Hebden Bridge. It has loyal and excited customer base and a strong mailing list. The website is fab and accounts for more than a third of our sales. We post parcels all over the country and often beyond. We have great relationships with our amazing and talented suppliers and it is THE best selling outlet of Hannah Nunn products in the country. We've had loads of great press. Sometimes when people walk out of the doors and think I can't hear them, I catch them saying it is their favourite shop in the world. How nice is that! There actually aren't any more shops in the UK specialising in artisan lighting. Radiance is completely unique.

So I'd be crazy to close it right? 

What if I could find the perfect person to buy it? Someone who could give it their full attention. Someone passionate about design and craft and lighting. Someone who wants to work in a beautiful, glowing environment and sell products that light people up and make them happy :)  And what if I could use the proceeds from the sale to develop my products and grow my Hannah Nunn business, which is what I am so excited to do? Sounds like a plan to me!  (b.t.w I always kept Hannah Nunn and Radiance as two separate businesses). 

It's taken a lot of grappling and soul searching to be here at this point writing this post but I feel absolutely clear that it is the right thing to do so here I am setting the wheels of change in motion. I'm not going to put it on sale with an agent. I'm hoping that between us we might be able to reach that perfect person. Please note, it's just the business that is for sale, not the building itself.

Do you know anyone who is looking for a new and exciting venture? Would you spread the word? I've been poised, waiting to set this whisper free onto the grapevine.

If you do know anyone, or even anyone who might know someone (!) please forward this email or ask them to email me at hannah@hannahnunn.co.uk and we can discuss it further. 

Or perhaps that someone is you!?

Whoever it might be, I'm looking forward to stepping aside on and seeing it flourish. 

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you will share my excitement.

Hannah x

Meadowland

I have been reading the loveliest book called Meadowland by John Lewis-Stempel. Anyone who knows me and my work knows how excited I get about all the wonderful flora and fauna in the fields so they will share my joy in finding such a book.

John Lewis-Stempel has a meadow of his own and he knows it intimately. He knows every grass, every flower and every birdsong. He knows which creatures are nesting where, from families of tiny voles to the foxes and the badgers. He knows which moth caterpillars he will find munching on a moonlit night, he knows how many species of beetle he might find wallowing under a cowpat!

The book takes us through the year of his meadow from bleak January snows, to the absolute bursting beauty of high summer and then back to winter again. I am so glad I read it in June when our meadows are in their full glory because I realised it is so fleeting. Soon it would be time for them to be mown and I needed to get out and enjoy them while I could.

So I have been out up on the hills with my camera, enjoying the long evening shadows, getting down at floor level and enjoying all the shapes and textures.

I won't ever know the fields as well as the author (well maybe if I plonk my house in the middle...I can dream) but I was very pleased with myself when I knew exactly where to find the patch of  my absolute favourite grass that inspired my latest wallpaper design. 

It is so exquisite and delicate.

I have a lovely friend called Belinda Norrington who is a jeweller with a business called Wild Acre. We have followed each others work and our mutual meadow love for a number of years but have never met. Yesterday she came to stay with me on a fleeting visit to Hebden Bridge.

The day before she arrived she emailed to ask if I had read a book called Meadowland and if I hadn't she was going to bring it for me! How funny. I had been thinking I needed to buy a copy for her before she arrived! The mutual meadow love continues.

So last night we took a meandering walk in the fields over looking Hebden Bridge. 

We had SO much to talk about. Life, inspiration, business, yoga, our growing children, dreams, plans and how to capture the delicate beauty in the meadows in our work.

I've always hoped that one day we would get together and have a meadow walk. Such joy to have it actually happen on a beautiful summer evening.

Reading Meadowland has made the fields even richer. Now they are full of stories, folklore, new smells, new sounds, new names for things. And I have had many blissfully happy evenings, content in perfect present moment awareness, soaking it up, not wanting to be anywhere else.

As John Lewis-Stempel writes 'Eternity would not be enough to contain all the summer eves one could enjoy if it were like this'. So true.

Earlier on Belinda text me from her train home saying she just heard it was the inaugural 'National Meadows Day' so I thought that tonight would be the perfect night to pull together this blog post and share some photos.

Happy Meadow Day x

My fabrics are on my website

I have spent a lovely day photographing my fabric and I am pleased to say it is now on my website and available to buy! Hooray!

Here is the Blush.

It's really pretty.

And here is the Teal.

And here is the charcoal.

Samples are available too so you can match your colours.

Now my eyes are square from hours on the computer. It's just too much fun pinning new images to Pinterest (new fabric board) and sharing them everywhere I can think of! Please feel free to take over from me. I need to go and cook my tea :)

My fabric is HERE!

Yesterday was a happy day. My long awaited fabric arrived from the factory.

Meet my three new babies. Charcoal, Teal and Blush.

It's nearly as tall as me.

It's very lovely and I am ever so pleased with it. The printers have done a fine job indeed.

I love the selvedge. 

So today we have been getting to know it. It a new thing for me.  It's not paper! I have little bits of fabric fluff all over my leggings but I have some neat piles of samples waiting to find their way into the hands of some creative customers...

Next week we will be taking photos and as soon as they are ready I will be putting them on my website ready to go!

Emma Linney's final show

This is Emma Linney. She's having a well deserved glass of fizz at the preview of her final degree show on the Surface Design course at Huddersfield Uni. Emma did an internship with me on her placement year and we all loved her. During her final year I wanted to keep her on so I offered her a job and she has been working in the studio two or three days ever since. She has built one or two lamps and posted an odd parcel here and there (okay there have been LOADS) and been a bright spirit in the studio in general. All the while we have shared the journey of  her last year at uni and how she brought together her final show. 

Her course is the Surface Design BA and the students can experiment with a huge range of techniques, printers and high tech machinery. Some students create finished products and some, like Emma create a collection of samples to inspire interior designers to use them in their projects.

The results were stunning. I'm glad Emma was there to talk me through the processes that each piece went through; U.V printing, laser cutting, screen-printing, laser rasterisation and more...

She now has many possibilities to explore with regards to her future. She is hard working, bright and creative. She will do well whatever she decides to do. I will be sad to lose her but super proud when she flies the nest and goes out into the world.

Wallpaper at Elmet Farmhouse

I just visited Lesley Jacksons Elmet Farmhouse to see my Teal Paper Meadow wallpaper which has been used in the upstairs bathroom.

And very fine it looks too with her lovely Ercol chair which happened to be painted that colour already!

It was lovely to have a tour of the garden in bloom. Last time I was there installing lamps it was the dead of winter and the garden was just a promise.

I love these cute things.

Beautiful Astrantias. My Mum calls them Hatties Pincushions.

Lesley has a garden gate that opens out onto a meadow. How utterly perfect is that!

I walked home through the fields

which are bursting with detail and loveliness. 

Wild Woods

The woods were astonishing today.

Deep, fresh, new, unfurling.

It took us a while to get going today. Ffion is revising for her last exam (EVER) and felt inclined to stay at her desk. We were both a bit grumpy. But with some effort we made it and out and walked to Colden Clough. It was like heaven.

 We saw the bluebells in all their spectacular blueness.

The wild garlic filled the air

and covered the forest floor.

It's just so inspiring. This valley is just so stunning at this time of year. It makes me want to get out as much as possible and enjoy every drop of it.

We concluded that going for a walk is ALWAYS the right thing to do.