D-Bros on the shelf

I am a little bit in love with Japanese illustration, books and stationery. A few items are slowly slipping out of Japan onto the shelves of select shops in London. Happily, I am working near the new-ish Magma ‘product’ shop at the moment, which sells paper nonsense, amongst other things. And on paper shelves, which is nice.

Magma is all a bit designery and knowing but they like their graphics. And I’ve (almost) given up pretending I’m not like that. I regularly check the shop for new things. Picking amongst their latest Japanese bits and pieces today – I bought myself a nice D-Bros Happy Birthday card. Need I mention it is going on the shelf, not actually to be used?

The D-Bros website is all fur coat and no knickers – as the saying goes. But they do really lovely work. And it is nice to finally see as well as buy some of it over here. Especially after spying it on various Japanese websites. But surfing those many, many Japanese sites is a Catch-22 mouth-watering and frustrating undertaking – don’t know what it says, can’t buy it easily, but want it all.

They do paper so well in Japan. From the country that invented Origami you expect it. But this isn’t about printing on paper; it’s about cutting and forming crisp paper, exquisitely. And it’s about small things, details, quirky illustrations, nods to historical graphics and winks to some of the great designers and illustrators of the mid-20th century: Calder, Girard, Eksell, Munari, Rand…