April members' promotion: Dumbo Feather

Our members' promotion for April is the chance to win an annual subscription to one of Australia's most loved magazine titles: Dumbo Feather. After 26 quarterly issues under the watchful eye of founding editor Kate Bezar, Dumbo Feather is now being helmed by Patrick Pittman and team.

Dumbo Feather is a magazine for people who want to be told a different story than the one they hear every day. Every quarter, we scour the globe for stories of people who inspire us, excite us, or just slow us down. Dumbo people don't need to be famous, they just need to be people worth knowing. We bring you their stories as long-form, in-depth interviews.

The latest issue is a magazine about radical farming, avant garde music, Parisian style, land, life, love, death, Shirley Temple, independent publishing, Burmese border guards, post-flood reconstruction, industrial machinery, collectors, hoarders, activists, bakers and social entrepreneurs.

It's an absolutely beautiful publication that looks and feels incredible, reminding us there are some things online publishing can't provide. The latest issue (#27) is currently available for purchase or perusal at Craft Victoria.

In conjunction with the relaunch, Dumbo Feather are kindly offering 3 lucky individuals who sign up for a Craft Victoria membership an annual subscription valued at $45. Click here to read more about it, but first we have a special interview with Dumbo Feather's editor Patrick Pittman.

Congratulations on the new edition of Dumbo Feather. How long have you been fans of the magazine? How did you first come across it?

Thanks! It’s been a wild ride pulling it together over the last few months, but we’re thrilled to be able to release our baby into the world.

I first came across Dumbo Feather somewhere towards the start of its run, while scouring the shelves of my local newsagent in Perth. This strange little magazine, with its awkward title and abstract cover image, stood out from everything else on the shelf. It was stubbornly beautiful, and it seemed to be about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. "That’ll never sell!", I exclaimed to myself. But I bought a copy, and then another one, and I got a sense of this beautiful, unlikely project that Kate Bezar was undertaking. Even then, I wouldn’t have bet that it would have lasted 26 quarterly issues, that it would have built up a loyal subscriber base and a passionate worldwide community of readers. That stuff doesn’t happen in independent publishing. I know this because I’ve been to the panel discussions where they’ve told me this. I’m glad Kate wasn’t listening. And moreso, I’m honoured to be able to step into her shoes, and to give the magazine new life in a new home.


Tell us a bit about the new issue, who is profiled?

We have five main interviews. Joel Salatin is a radical, ‘beyond organic’ farmer from the USA, who’s a bit of a hero amongst those who read Michael Pollan and watch documentaries like Food Inc. I met him on a farm out at Woodend a few months back and was mesmerised. He talks in italics, and you can’t help but feel that you’re going to change the world just by having exchanged a few words with him. Richard Skelton is a British composer whose deeply sad and beautiful music moves me like little else out there. He’s one of my favourite musicians in the world, and he proved to be an extremely warm and generous human being. That interview has made more than a few people cry, and I don’t apologise for that.

Catherine Baba is an absolutely fabulous Australian stylist living in Paris. There’s not a lot about Catherine on the internet, but you’ll see her cycling mysteriously through style blogs and fashion pages, effortlessly outshining everybody around her. We also went to the Melbourne Museum of Printing in Footscray for a beautiful photo essay, rummaging through Michael Isaachsen’s utterly unique collection of old printing equipment.

And then, of course, there’s Kate Bezar, the magazine’s founding editor. Kate is a remarkable woman, and our readers have been demanding a profile of her for a long time. I think dedicated readers will learn a lot over those 20 pages, and also get to jealously regard her idyllic and isolated New Zealand lifestyle. I know I do.

We’ve also got a few shorter profiles, and some new features. We asked Ruby Murray to profile anybody she wanted, from any time in history. She chose Shirley Temple. We’re glad she did. In the first instalment in our memoir series, Chris Flynn recounts his brief period imprisoned by Burmese border guards. And leading off the magazine is a beautiful dispatch from Christopher Currie, making sense of things in post-flood Brisbane.

Who do you have your sights on to feature in upcoming issues of Dumbo Feather?

Well that’s a secret, but we just painted one of the walls in our office with blackboard paint, and we’ve covered it in a huge chalky wishlist. It’s a mix of our heroes and idols and locals with something to say. The writing on the wall is pretty exciting (see what I did? see?).

The magazine has moved from Sydney to Melbourne, do you think this has or will impact on the style and content?

A magazine is always, to some extent, borne of its surroundings. We’re collaborating with some remarkably talented Melburnians, and we’ve moved all of the production to local printers and suppliers. There are some great long-term friends of Dumbo Feather in this town, such as Abi Crompton of Third Drawer Down — she’s really able to put a lot of energy behind the magazine now that it’s local — and our printers (Printgraphics in Mount Waverley) have put almost as much passion into this magazine as Berry (our Publisher), Jess [Friedmann, Assistant Editor] and I have. There is a great independent publishing scene in this town, and I feel as though we are surrounded by people full of support and goodwill.

But, with that said, the magazine is an Australian one and an international one. We don’t want it to feel like a Melbourne-centric project. By way of having spent more time there than anywhere else on the planet, I’d call myself a Perth boy, and I know what it’s like to feel that everything great in this country is Victorian and inwards-looking. We scour the world for our subjects, for our contributors and for our inspiration. Hopefully the magazine we make means as much to somebody in Berlin as it does to somebody in Brunswick, and when we profile somebody in a factory in Footscray, it’s because their story is a universal one.

We hear you have some new designers? What’s the biggest change in the layout, what can we expect?

I’ve been a long-distance admirer of Stuart Geddes’ work since the first Is Not magazine I saw pasted on a wall however many years ago that was. His work with Chase & Galley on Meanjin has also been absolutely astounding—to take an iconic publication and inject new life into it without destroying its soul is not an easy ask. And that’s what we asked of him too. I knew he was an extremely talented gentleman, but even I didn’t expect him and his cohort Tristan Main to knock the ball as far out of the park as they have with this redesign.

I am, above all, a content man, and the new layout has been created to do justice to the great work of our writers and our photographers. The new Dumbo Feather is larger, and I’d say a little splashier. It does many things that one should probably never do in magazine design, and yet, for all of its rule-breaking, it comes together into a beautiful final product. It’s full of colour, and richness, and warmth, and play. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a magazine whose design is so full of joy, even in its somber moments.

What plans do you have for the future of Dumbo Feather?

We’re just rolling out the first phase of a wonderful new web presence, put together by Inventive Labs, the Golden Grouse and That Mob. Our ‘Interviews with Children’ project with Harrell Fletcher is probably the first example of our plans to really work with our community of readers to create new and beautiful things. We’re going to be doing a lot more of that. We want to grow, and we’re full of ideas for how we remain relevant in a digital age, telling Dumbo Feather stories across many platforms. But we remain committed to the magazine as a physical, beautiful object that can be cherished and loved, and everything we do is built around that as our core reason for existing.


Tell us some places you look for inspiration, do you have any favourite blogs?

I look to my record collection, to my bookshelf, to the things the people around me are creating. I’ve found I’ve developed the obsessive editor’s tendency of needing to know the complete story behind every product I buy, and every shop I enter, because they all might be a story I want to tell in the magazine (and not just a great place to get a Bloody Mary). I don’t seem to be big on the blogs these days, but Jessica obssesively reads Apartment Therapy and Smitten Kitchen, and not a day goes by when somebody in the office isn’t raving about a TED talk they’ve seen. We of course love The Design Files, and Pia Jane Bijkerk’s blog is a Dumbo favourite from way back.

Dumbo Feather posters in action

Issue 27 of Dumbo Feather is currently available at Craft Victoria.

To be in the running to win one of three annual subscriptions (valued at $45), make sure you sign up to our membership program before 5pm, Friday 8 April!

Craft Victoria Professional Membership offers a multitude of benefits to practitioners, including a profile on the Craft Maker directory, half price entry to all Public Programming and FREE professional development with Craft Victoria staff.

Click here to join now!


All images courtesy of Dumbo Feather.

March members' promotion: Baddaginnie Run Wines

Our members promotion for this month is kindly supported by Baddaginnie Run Wines, suppliers and purveyors of fine wine proudly made in Victoria.

Located in the Strathbogie Ranges, Baddaginnie Run is a family-owned boutique winery, using innovative and environmentally sensitive viticulture methods with grapes grown on the Seven Sisters Vineyard... and if you've been to one of our recent exhibition openings, you may have already tasted one of Baddaginnie's fine wines!

For this month's promotion, Baddaginnie is giving away five boutique wine gift packs to five lucky people who take out a Craft Victoria membership this month! The prize pack consists of two bottles of wine and if you are one of the lucky vino-winners, you can collect your prize from Craft Victoria.

Introducing you to Baddaginnie Run today are Directors Winsome McCaughey and Snow Barlow, both of whom have extensive backgrounds in the field (and you can read more about them here). Don't forget that you can enjoy Baddaginnie Run wine at our next opening which is happening next week on Thursday 10 March from 6-8pm.

What is your background in food and wine and how have you seen the industry change in the last ten years?

Both Winsome [McCaughey] and Snow [Barlow] have had lifetime associations with food and wine, Snow as Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture as well as the former Head of the School of Agriculture and Food Systems at the University of Melbourne and Winsome growing up on a farm with first hand knowledge as a primary producer.

Some of the changes we have seen in the Industry include a customer shift to small, boutique producers and the support of Farmers Markets. Customers want to know where their food and wine comes from and are interested in the direct link between the producer/grower to their shopping baskets and tables.

(You can find Baddaginnie Run and many others amazing growers and producers at Gasworks Farmers Market on the third Saturday of every month - the next one is on Saturday 19 March from 8.30am to 1pm!)


Winemaking is a craft in itself, what do you (and Baddaginnie) enjoy the most about the process?

Winsome has been closely involved in both the arts and the wine industry for many years and sees many similarities between the creativity and determination involved in the ancient art of fine winemaking and the crafts as we know them today:

"The creative process, whether it be crafting a beautiful piece of jewellery or a making a fine wine, requires intense focus, even to the point of obsession. Winemakers and crafts people both use their imagination, both experiment, push boundaries and continuously re-evaluate their work, as they strive to achieve a particular balance, expression or effect."

Winsome thinks the late Max Schubert, creator of Grange Hermitage, summed it up when he said:

"Good winemakers must possess a fertile imagination to be successful in their craft. To make great wine then winemakers, like artists, must be willing to... give some of their personality to their wine... it is part and parcel of the wine itself. The greatest wines have implanted in them the ideas of the winemaker... their character is part of the wine."

What does 'terroir' mean and how does it affect the taste and qualities of the wine?

The quality of Baddaginnie Run wines arise from our terroir... a term used by the French for aeons to describe the combination of natural elements - soils, climate, altitude, slope, with the cultural values and practices of the people of a particular place.

For us there’s also a cultural and spiritual dimension to terroir. Love of land and family, instilled in us by our ancestors underpins much of what we do today. Irrespective of where family members now live and work, generations and branches of the family, together with friends, come back to share this sense of belonging to place, and to help with the planting of the indigenous wildlife corridors and farm-forestry shelter belts that today criss-cross the valley.

These green networks now support biodiversity, provide shade and shelter for stock, help prevent rising saline water tables and make the Vineyard not just carbon neutral, but in carbon credit! Our aim is to grow premium quality grapes and create a natural harmony between vines and country.

Baddaginnie Run is a family-owned winery, how long have the family been on the land and involved in wine making?

Although the vineyard was established in 1996, the family has been associated with this land for over 140 years. The vineyard is truly a family affair with many members involved in wine making, harvesting, marketing, tree planting and restoration.


Tell us a bit more about the history of the Strathbogie Ranges ( ...we hear it was where the Kelly gang roamed).

The Strathbogie Ranges is a beautiful ancient, granite massif less than two hours north of Melbourne. The ranges are 400 million years old and emanate a sense of timeless mystery with dramatic granite outcrops, steep gullies, high plateaus, hidden waterfalls, majestic vistas, magical forests and ferny glades.

The Strathbogie Ranges was originally the land of the Taungurong people and last century to the Kelly gang. Ned spent his formative years in Avenel where and earned his famous green sash for extreme bravery. Many local families have Kelly stories to tell!

To be in the running to win one of five Baddaginnie Run wine packs, make sure you take out a Craft Victoria membership this month! For more details including membership benefits, click here.


All images from Baddaginnie Run Wines

February members promotion: Peppermint Magazine!

Peppermint issue 7

Peppermint is one of Australia's newest and cutest magazines that dishes out bimonthly doses of fashion, natural beauty, culture and social issues while maintaining a strong eco-friendly and ethical focus. In fact, they are so thoroughly green through and through right down to the how they print the magazine, approach advertisers and carry out their everyday office activities.

With 8 issues under their belt (the next issue is due in early March!), we're super delighted to be partnering with Peppermint for our February members promotion. This month, join Craft Victoria as a member to be in the running for a one-year subscription to Peppermint absolutely free! Yay for free things!!

Before we go on, we had the pleasure of speaking with (or rather, emailing) Tess Curran, Peppermint's Assistant Editor about the magazine.

'Style Statemint' - a regular feature on regular folk with better-than-regular wardrobes

How long have you been working on Peppermint?
Around two years. I have been onboard since Issue 2 (the first newsagent issue of the magazine), in various capacities - as a writer, sub-editor, and now, Assistant Editor.

The magazine in based in Brisbane, do you cover content from all over Australia?
Yes. We are based in Brisbane but are distributed nationally and consider ourself a national fashion & lifestyle magazine. Our readers come from far and wide across the country (and the world!), so we try to make sure we always cater to this diversity by focussing on events, designers and issues/attractions from as many locations as we can.

Beauty feature

Feature on Coco Loco in Northcote - the world's first certified organic and fair trade chocolate bar

You seem to have a real focus on sustainability, how is this important to the magazine?
Peppermint is Australia's first and only green fashion magazine. This was Kelley's (Peppermint's founder/editor) focus from the outset, as she wanted to show that being sustainable didn't mean you had to compromise on style, or ethics, or creativity... We encourage compassionate fashion, individual personal style, creativity and artistic expression, social and environmental awareness, and the promotion of real women as role models (rarely seen in today's media industry).

Sustainability is not just what we cover, but also what we are about as a business: we carry our green values right down to how we print our magazine, who we approach for advertising, and how we conduct ourselves in the office and in life!

What kind of craft practice inspires you?
I love all craft! I am continuously inspired and starting new craft or sewing projects myself in my (limited) free time. I really love collage and DIY stationery, sculpture work using upcycled objects, all matter of softies, patchworked cushions, repurposed ceramics... The list goes on.

Craft and sewing is a huge part of sustainability as you can always use what you have to create something new - it's a wonderful process! I actually wrote a large feature on Australian crafters in Peppermint Issue 3 (called 'Made With Love: The World of DIY' - pictured below), and met a lot of lovely women doing amazingly creative things - very inspiring!

'Their future in the palm of your hand' - environmental feature on the adverse effects of palm oil

And finally, what are some of your favourite blogs?
The Design Files, CRAFT, Style Bubble, Style Will Save Us, Loveology, treehugger, kit+nancy, Meet Me at Mikes, heart handmade, Dude Craft, Advanced Style, hello sandwich, about 1000 tumblr pages, and, of course, Peppermint Mag blog!

Peppermint issue 8 - now available in newsagents across town!

To qualify for one of four free one-year subscription to Peppermint, make sure you sign up as a member before 5pm, Fri 4 February. To join, click here!

All images courtesy of Peppermint Magazine

Be a November Member and WIN!

Another month ticks over and we have another member promotion delivering free goodies! The first twenty people to take out a membership in November will receive a FREE copy of The Paper Garden: Mrs Delany begins her life's work at 72

It’s a rollicking good read and tells the Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (1700–1788) who picked up the scissors and ran with it at the at the ripe old age of 72 to create a whole new artform of mixed media collage.

Here's our exclusive interview with the author of The Paper Garden, Molly Peacock.

How did you come across the story of Mary Granville Pendarves Delany?
It's a long journey. I first saw her work in 1986 at the Morgan Library in New York City, and I swooned over it, but I couldn't afford the pricey imported book that came with it (I was a seventh grade teacher at a private Quaker school in New York), so I went off into my life. Then, in 2003, I saw them again. My husband and I had just been guest lecturers at Oxford, and we came into London briefly on our way back to North America, stopping at the British Museum. My husband had to make a phone call, so I wandered into the gift shop. It was a Looooooong phone call, so I made my way through the whole shop, and on the last table at the very end was the book I couldn't afford seventeen years earlier. Now I could afford it! I bought it and we left and got on a plane. As I read it and looked at the amazing images I reconnected. The book was by Mrs. Delany's great-great-great-great-great-great niece, Ruth Hayden. I didn't realize at the time that Delany's collages were right there in the Museum. It was only when I went back to London the following year that I saw them in person.


In what ways did she create a template for contemporary craft practices?
Mrs. Delany was ALWAYS busy with her hands. She believed with her whole heart that keeping occupied with the hands soothes the mind. She played the harpsichord, she designed embroidery patterns and sewed, she did shellwork (collecting shells and plastering them into patterns on ceilings, lintels, frames and mirrors), she did japanning (shellacking boxes to imitate Asian lacquerware), she designed her own clothes, and she famously, at 72, began her miraculous cut-paper floral collages on dramatic black backgrounds. Mrs. Delany believing in attempting, in plunging in, even when the goal was overwhelming. She also did all of these crafts WITH HER FRIENDS. This wasn't a solo activity for her. It was communal. This sets the template for us, for attempting crafts even without experience, and for doing it in company. For her it was fun. And it can be fun for us, too.


If you were going to take this book on a holiday where would you go?
I'd go from North America to Australia and New Zealand, of course! I'd take it anywhere there was a garden or a flower to look at.

For your chance to win a copy, make sure you take out a membership!

New! Monthly member promotions at Craft Victoria

To celebrate Craft Victoria’s new Monthly Member Promotions, we've got the lowdown on some hot crafty things to see and do in the cool southern climes of Hobart thanks to Mr & Mrs Smith, international boutique hotel experts who will be kicking off our exciting promotions program.

Hobart

New members who join in the month of October (i.e. now!) will go into the draw to win one of five Mr & Mrs Smith: Australia & New Zealand Hotel Collection guides, which includes listings for some of the fabulous hotels featured in this post plus many, many more!

Each Guide is valued at $45 and includes a free BlackSmith membership (value $25). The guides profile a collection of the best boutique and luxury hotels in the region, each visited personally by the Smith team and reviewed anonymously by a local tastemaker. The incognito style-seekers from the worlds of fashion, theatre, design, food and wine include actor Sigrid Thornton, chefs Christine Manfield and Andrew McConnell (who owns Cumulus Inc, our next door neighbour!), media luminary Deborah Hutton, and events guru David Grant.

The Henry Jones Art Hotel

The Henry Jones Art Hotel is 'jam packed' with over 250 original contemporary Tasmanian artworks, but perhaps more impressively it's also housed in seven historical IXL jam factory warehouses.

MONA Pavillions - all four of them (ooh)

The four MONA Pavilions are named after iconic Australian artists whom all of us should know on a first name basis: Sidney (Nolan), Brett (Whiteley), Arthur (Boyd) and Charles (Blackman).

MONA Pavillions - in twilight (aah)

The Islington (which only has eleven rooms!)



Rooms that look like this!

What we're really excited about though is the impending opening of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) which many of you may know as organiser behind the catchily titled MONA FOMA (Festival of Music and Art) or perhaps by its other affectionate nickname, MOFO.

MOFO will be happening between 14-20 January 2011 and MONA is due to throw its doors open in January 2011. Why we might even hop on to the Spirit of Tasmania to see it!

For further information about what to do and see in Hobart, make sure you visit Mr & Mrs Smith!

To take out a Craft Victoria membership in October for the chance to win one of their amazing Mr & Mrs Smith: Australia & New Zealand Hotel Collection guides, click here.

You can join and pay online so it's quick, easy and secure. You'll also get your membership within one or two business days (because they're processed efficiently by yours truly!)

Members' screening: Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Image credit

On a Tuesday not too long ago, Craft Victoria members and their lucky date were given the opportunity to attend a free screening of Woody Allen's latest masterpiece, Vicky Cristina Barcelona at Carlton's Cinema Nova.

Starring Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is about 2 girls (Vicky and Cristina) who travel to Barcelona for the summer where their lives are changed after one weekend with seductive Spanish lothario, Juan Antonio. To reveal any more of the plot would be to unveil spoilers, but needless to say it was a fantastic movie and worth every cent. Hehe! Just kidding, but we strongly urge you to watch this film if you can.

To attend in future free film screenings, keep an eye out for giveaways in the members' edition of the Craft Almanac! If you are not already a member, now is a great time to join as CVHQ has recently halved membership rates. Hurrah! This is because our memberships follow the financial year calendar so if you act now, you can take full advantage of a 7 month membership which will end on 30 June 2009 for only half the price. That's $44 for a professional membership, $33 for a supporter membership and $22 for students. For more details, have a look at our list of member benefits on the website. It'd make a good Christmas gift!

In The Making applications closing soon...

Just a gentle reminder to all our crafty members out there: applications for In The Making close on Monday 14 July, so make sure you get your work in by then! Forms are available to download on our website and if you are having trouble with the documents please call us at 9650 7775. Looking forward to seeing your work!

Wild and Woolly

Last night Craft Victoria members enjoyed a free advance screening of the epic film from Russian director Sergei Bodrov, Mongol. Shot in Mongolia, the film covers the perilous early years of Genghis Khan, and is the first in a planned trilogy about the ruler's life. We loved the costume design and the stunning landscape footage. Apparently the maple walnut choc tops from the Kino Dendy Cinema weren't bad either! The evening was also an opportunity for members to meet Joe Pascoe, Craft Victoria's new CEO and Artistic Director. Big thanks to our friends at Hopscotch Films and the Kino for making the event possible.