Vicky Yorke Designs

  The 'Partridge & Pear' designs are continued across a number of festive porcelain platters, which are ideal for serving your Christmas feasts! I think that the heart-shaped platters below would also work well as a trinkets tray - I'm going to get one to put my jewellery in! However, perhaps the more traditional use for the bowls is for figs and nuts! My favourite product in the range is the cake stand, where the heart and dove motifs are combined to very decorative effect. (I love combining patterns together for a pattern overload!) I'm looking forward to using this for my Christmas cupcakes and mince pies! Images copyright Kitchen Craft 2012

As we move through the first week of August I have been extremely busy designing my THIRD Christmas range for 2013. This is the sixth Christmas range I have designed in twelve months ( - it's lucky I love Christmas so much!) and all of the ranges are completely different, focusing on very contrasting styles and themes. Among my favourite ranges is ' Partridge & Pear , ' which was launched by Kitchen Craft at Exclusively Housewares . I am a big fan of Scandinavian / folk style prints and I hope that these designs capture this essence. Inspired by the trend for paper cut-outs and following the range name of 'Partridge & Pear', I designed a series of motifs, (heart, turtle dove, pear and partridge) and applied these boldly across the product range. I used a limited colour pallet of red, white and silver to create a dramatic effect. These work as a design for Christmas, but because of the current trend for folk designs, I personally think they could be used

Christmas is a time when everyone seems to love baking - even I have been known to put on an apron and attempt a batch of mince pies during the festive period! The 'Christmas Fayre' range has everything needed to make baking with the kids ( or on your own!) really easy and fun! There is a baking kit containing a red mixing bowl, (which has my design embossed all the way round), cookie cutters and a spatula. Separate sets of fun Christmas spatulas featuring my design motifs are also available. The apron is one of my favourite products in the range. You can't quite see in the photo but the pockets have super-cute button detailing, which is combined with a fuller than normal apron skirt to create a quirky 1950's style. The matching oven mitt completes the designer look!!! And when all the baking is finished there are even tea towels to help you finish the washing up - Or, you could just put everything in the dishwasher and use the tea towels to add a dash of fe

The ceramic products that I designed for 'Christmas Fayre' have been amongst the most challenging and exciting! As a surface pattern designer I work in 2D, but as a product developer I have to be able to imagine my finished product in 3D and provide accurate drawings and instructions to help factories turn my concepts into reality. My design process nearly always begins with hand drawing. For 'Christmas Fayre', I scanned my drawings into Adobe Illustrator and converted them into vector files for the factories to use; however, for the salt and pepper set and napkin rings pictured above I had to provide accurate drawings of the sides, top and bottom as well - pretty tricky when designing on paper! The factories have done an amazing job of interpreting my drawings and I couldn't be more pleased with these finished products - all of which, incidentally, are painted by hand! For the ceramic mug and plates I chose areas of the designs to emboss, so that the ch