Since it opened in November 2006, Glasgow store Hitherto has gradually cemented its presence on the city’s creative scene, capturing the imaginations of students from the city’s school of art in the process. Alex Zamora caught up with founder Krista Blake to find out how she got started and what the future holds in store

How did you set up Hitherto?

This café was opening in Glasgow called Tinderbox. One of the owners is a music and art enthusiast and they had this space in the back of the café which they were going to use for extra seating. It’s got nice big windows and he originally thought about using it to showcase other small independent shops, but someone suggested that I talk to him about having a shop which sells stuff which you can’t find anywhere else; a mixture of things which are quirky and odd, as well as things made by local artists.

So who were the first people you got involved in Hitherto?

The first people were Emily Robertson and Sofia Pankenier. Then Stuart White came on board, as well as Rebecca Davies and Emma Houlston. Marc Baines who teaches at the Glasgow School of Art also does stuff in here. There wasn’t anywhere like this in Glasgow before, which is unfortunate because the city’s such a hotbed of talent.

What exactly are your links to Glasgow School of Art?

They’re pretty informal links and direct with the students. A lot of them are third or fourth year Illustration at the art school. That’s my main stop for getting people involved. We think of retail projects and I ask people to do specific things to sell in here such as limited edition products. A new shop at the Glasgow School of Art is opening soon and they’ve asked us to get involved. They want to sell stuff which I’ve been getting artists to do in here so we’re actually putting some of the products back into the art school which is really nice.

Did you actively pursue people from the Glasgow School of Art or did they come to you?

It was kind of both. I asked a couple of people and also I’m quite friendly with Marc Baines who’s a fabulous illustrator. When we put the records out for the design festival I asked him to get some of his students to do 7-inch sleeve mock-ups to hang in the window. All the students did these great records sleeves, but there was one particular girl, Clemence Coquet, who did an embroidered Patti Smith sleeve. I approached her to do a series of designs which I’m getting made into cushions. It’s all based on fonts which she’s obsessed by. She’s going to do it as part of her degree show and then we’re going to launch it as a limited edition series.

What other projects have you done at Hitherto?

Well pretty soon after we opened there was the big GI Festival in Scotland and the people organising it asked me what I would do as a project if I had funding. I said I’d really like to make a record celebrating Postcard Records which was a really DIY record label here. They used to make these records and design these fold-out sleeves which the bands coloured-in themselves, so we decided to do a limited run of 500 records and we got two bands to record it and Stuart White to do all the artwork for them. He did the design for the sleeve and then we had an event where all these bands came down including some of the Franz Ferdinand guys. We had a big colouring-in party and folded them all, hand-stamped them, assembled them and put them all together. It was a really nice project which was published in the YCN book last year.

Does Hitherto have an ethos?

It’s pretty open really. There’s a lot of my taste in here. I collaborate with the artists and sometimes I ask them to do specific things for the shop because I’ve been inspired by the work they’ve done. For examples we’ve put out handkerchiefs designed by Rebecca Davies. That came from her degree show where she did really beautiful drawings of famous people’s noses, everyone from Charlie Brown to Sigmund Freud. She works in Hitherto and I just love her work so I asked her if she’d be interested in making a series of handkerchiefs for us. Occasionally I get people from elsewhere to do stuff, but mostly I try to focus on students from the art school, or those just out. We also try to promote local talent as much as possible. We’ve only been open a year, but we’re going to keep working on projects as long as we can. We have a really good support system around us and as long as there’s a lot of love for the place then I think there’s a lot of potential to do good things.

Related Links

http://www.hithertoshop.co.uk | http://www.glasgowinternational.org