‘BUTTONS & BOWS’

TWO STEAMCREAM TINS DESIGNED BY ARTIST LISA MILROY

This year, we have teamed up with artist Lisa Milroy to encourage artists, designers and enthusiasts to enter our annual design competition and create an exclusive limited edition STEAMCREAM tin design.

To celebrate this year’s competition, Lisa has designed two tins – ‘Buttons & Bows’. Her designs stem from her practice as a still life painter. In describing her approach to the project, Lisa comments:

Lisa Milroy
Buttons and Bows
Lisa Milroy for STEAMCREAM – ‘Buttons and Bows’
"STEAMCREAM tins feel pleasurable to hold in the hand. A tin sits easily on my palm as my fingers curl around to steady it. I twist off the colourful lid and the cream looks delicious - satin-smooth white, almost edible. But the smell is nothing like food. With the scent of lavender mixed with essential oils I’m transported to the countryside and fields of perfumed flowers. The fun of this discovery is keyed by the tin itself – it’s the same simple surprise that comes with opening up a tiny box. So I decided to turn two STEAMCREAM tins into small wrapped packages, one tied with a ribbon, the other fastened with buttons. Twist the lid: the package is unwrapped, the pearly cream an indulgent treat for skin."

- Lisa Milroy

Lisa Milroy was born in Vancouver, Canada and graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1982. Still life is at the heart of Milroy’s practice. In the 1980s her paintings featured ordinary objects depicted against an off-white ground. In the early 1990s, Milroy’s approach to still life painting shifted, leading to depictions of objects within settings. As the imagery expanded to include landscape, architecture and people, her painting style diversified. By continually experimenting with fast and slow applications of paint, Milroy has achieved within her paintings a wide range of moods and atmospheres. In recent years, Milroy’s focus has been on large-scale, installation-based paintings.

A major survey of Milroy’s work was held at Tate Liverpool in 2001. Solo shows in 2012 include Ivory Lamp Mars Vine Bone at Gallery North, Newcastle, and Act One, Seen Too at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. Milroy was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2006 and is Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL since 2009.

Buttons Bows Gift box
Limited Edition Lisa Milroy signed gift boxes – only 500 available worldwide
Lisa Milroy's Original Oil Canvases
Lisa Milroy’s Original Oil Canvases
"It has been an immense pleasure to collaborate with Lisa Milroy on this project.   Her designs are not only beautiful and thoughtful, they set us a new technical challenge – to reproduce an image made with oil paint and canvas onto our tins. We are thrilled with the result, which captures the lively expressiveness of Lisa’s work."

- STEAMCREAM

For information on Lisa Milroy, please visit www.lisamilroy.net