Cooper Hewitt says...
The Glasgow design firm Timorous Beasties, named after Robert Burns’s poem ‘To A Mouse,’ was founded in 1990 by Alastair McAuley and Paul Simmons, who met while studying design at the Glasgow School of Art. Timorous Beasties specializes in imaginative hand-printed wallpapers, blinds, and fabrics. Their heavily illustrated designs often depict provocative and in some cases unsettling imagery inspired by urban landscapes and botanical gardens alike. The company’s best-known print “Glasgow Toile” for example, replaces classical rural French scenery with images depicting the Glasgow underbelly: a graveyard, teenage moms, and drug addicts. McAuley and Simmons are interested in creating a new take on designs that reference both their own personal histories and the history of design more generally, allowing them to speak to the present. Beyond the thought provoking subject matter their prints demonstrate talented illustration and color work.
McAuley and Simmons attempt to establish edgy patterns as essential to contemporary design, in retaliation against the concepts which praise austerity and deem embellishment to be unfashionable. They produce unusual fabrics and explore experimental design techniques both in hand-printing and machine production. Timorous Beasties has designed a range of products and has worked on design projects with important companies including Nike and Penguin Books. They opened their first retail store in 2004 in Glasgow and their London showroom in 2007.
