MAGMA'S FIRST PRODUCT SHOP: NOW OPEN

09 September 2007 | interviews

Magma is re-launching its concept by opening a multi-purpose product shop in Covent Garden.

Typical scenario. You find yourself wondering through the streets of central London trying to find a present for a friend (or yourself, or both). You’re after something not outrageously expensive, something clever, tasteful, original, not kitsch, just a nice, simple idea. You walk in and out of hundreds of places selling jeans or trainers without being able to find anything remotely to your taste. What do you do?

Up to now there was just not that much you could do. From August onwards, however, we may be able to help.

While keeping our current shop open at number 8, Earlham street, we are taking up larger premises only a few doors down that same street (at number 16, of course, as 8x2=16!) in order to launch a completely new concept: a product shop, or design shop, or concept shop, or strange multi-purpose shop, or whatever you feel like calling it. Stock will range from stationery and cards to home and fashion accessories, jewellery, games & toys, eco-products and all manner of design objects – basically, anything that bears the stamp of creativity and intelligence upon it. Products with creative ideas, products that make simple things seem new again. Fresh, spontaneous, at times surreal, or disarmingly simple, these are products conceived (rather than preconceived) by artists, designers and all kinds of creative people.

When we say ‘all kinds of creative people’, we really mean it. After starting Magma, we were pleased to find that our shops were creating their own ‘scene’ and that we were being overwhelmed by people coming to us with new books, magazines, zines, posters, colouring-in and pop-up and screen-printed and handcrafted and recycled and customized and all manner of books and products. We hope the new shop will provide an even more varied and exciting platform for creatives, not restricted, this time, to printed matter.

As for our current Covent Garden shop, we will be revisiting its stock, making it sharper and more focussed, as we want the two shops to complement one another without overlapping. So that you will have:

Number 8 = books, magazines, dvds, tees.
Number 16 = everything else!

In one address you will get access to the immaterial world of books and dvds – in the other, the material world of objects.

The new shop is being designed by architects Julie Blum and Nikki Blustin. The environmentally friendly shelving will be made out of treated cardboard. Specially designed shelving units (and counters and changing-rooms) come flat-packed, to be unfolded and built up according to how many coffee cups are spilled on them.

At the back of the shop, under the skylight, you will find a more intricate shelving system. Carefully measured and hand-cut layer has been laid upon carefully measured and hand-cut layer to create a complex geography of cardboard material. The making of it has been a vastly laborious and time consuming task, something straight out of Michel Gondry’s film The Science of Sleep in which dreams are made out of cardboard.

Opening date: NOW!

Magma, 16 Earlham Street, WC2H 9NL, (0)20 7242 9503

Opening times: Monday to Saturday 10 am to 7 pm, Sunday 12 to 6pm



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A shop full of useful ideas: a gas lamp that projects the shadow of a tree onto your wall, a balloon lamp, bendable, foldable, deconstructable and recyclable objects, flip and pop-up books, do-it-yourself duct tape wallets, customisable Russian dolls, magnetic jewellery, stationery inspired by buildings, pantone mugs, modernist plates, outdoor ashtrays (to help you beat smoke bans), Shoplifter and Shop Local tote bags, kids’ animal t-shirts, animal cushions, animal masks, strips of paint by number wallpaper (so children can scribble freely on the walls), mini-designer chairs, Hayao Miyazaki plushes, Moomin notebooks, etc.

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A shop for all seasons. A tablecloth with a line of ants already going across it is ideal for stress free picnics, while the winter could be made a lot warmer if you could get your hands onto a mitt for lovers (allowing you to hold hands with your beloved even in the coldest, windiest afternoon). When the sun shines you can take out your fold-and-attach flat-packed flip-flops and in rainy days slip on your pop-up slippers. Oh yes, and when the sun comes out again, don’t forget to check out the rainbow maker hanging by your window.