Slingsby laMinx?

No, that is not a misprint. My favourite mug at work does say “Slingsby laMinx”, and here’s the reason why.

A squillion years ago, pre-Skinny laMinx, I worked with a powerhouse duo called Barbara Coombe and Maggie Slingsby. That’s us in the pic below, working on the series of 28 school reading books that we co-wrote and I illustrated.

The three of us would go away on writing trips to the Cederberg mountains, staying in the Traveller’s Rest cottages on the Sevilla Trail – famous for a wealth of ancient rock paintings in the caves nearby. During writing breaks, we would walk the trails with the woolly man in the pic below.

Who is the woolly man? Well, he’s Maggie’s husband, Peter Slingsby, the famous map maker and author, who has a deep interest and knowledge of the rock art of the area.

During this time, I was starting to experiment with screenprinting, and was intrigued to try combining these exquisite ancient drawings with a clean, Scandi-tinged aesthetic. So Pete very kindly lent me his flat-colour jpgs of the cave paintings, which I turned into vectors, and used these motifs to create my first ever textile collection, called Sevilla Rock, which I launched in 2009.

And 16 years later, the Herds design from that collection is still in print and is still a popular design.

Also, maybe more astonishingly, the Kagiso Readers still bring in a royalties income for me, Maggie and Barbara, and has been crucial as seed funding and constant stability while building Skinny laMinx.

Which brings me back to the reason for making this mug: It’s a way of reminding myself of the absolute stroke of enormous good luck I’ve had to be blessed with Maggie, Pete, reading books and rock art in my life.

xx