Just Flown in - New Archipelago

Shining the Spotlight on our favourite suppliers: Archipelago

We’ve been stocking Archipelago for over 12 years and it’s just one of those collections that we know our customers are always going to love.

Every spring we receive our flock of birds for the season – many of which fly right out the door again!

Archipelago is a UK based; family run business which began in 1989. All their products are designed here in Britain by a fantastic and incredibly talented little team of British artists, and then produced in Bali, Indonesia. Archipelago means chain of islands and with Indonesia being the largest Archipelago in the world, they decided it was the perfect brand name.

Archipelago work with 3 different villages in Bali, and all their carvers and painters are highly skilled – and very well practised – in creating the most beautiful and detailed sculptures. Each piece is created using environmentally friendly lead-free paints and local replaceable softwoods. Every figure is produced under fair trading conditions to benefit the village community. 

With each sculpture being hand made and hand finished it means that they are truly unique pieces of art.

Although we often dabble with stocking some garden birds and wildlife – it’s the sea birds that are without a doubt the most popular. We usually feature the large gannets and cormorants in our summer window displays and we’ve now learnt that ordering “one for the window” simply isn’t enough. However, the runaway favourites year on year are usually the wading birds, like the oystercatchers and curlews or the charming little puffins.

We find that the characters of these birds give them such broad appeal. It’s often those visiting the area on holiday who like to make an Archipelago bird their souvenir of the coast. However, they are undeniably popular with local customers too. One of our favourite things about the Archipelago birds is that they make fantastic gifts – and even better, they make fantastic gifts for men. The people that buy the birds for themselves are often couples or gents. Which means we know that when someone comes looking for a nice gift for a man – which is usually a tricky category - we can point them in this direction quite confidently.

Our feathered friends for this year have recently arrived, so you can take a look online here at what’s currently in stock for delivery. Or pop into the shop for a closer look – and to see the full range, including the big guys that are too heavy to post! As always, if there’s ever anything you were looking for that you can’t see online then please contact us and we’ll be able to help you. We don’t have everything online but that doesn’t always mean we’re not able to post it, if we can, we will!

Best wishes and happy browsing 😊