Timorous Beasties: Toile Tales: Modern-day fables woven by design

When Timorous Beasties rocked the world of interiors with their Glasgow Toile and London Toile textile and wallpaper patterns a new genre of visual storytelling was born. Now, in collaboration with writer, Steven D.P. Richardson, the studio turns its hand to the fabric of literature - Timorous Beasties: Toile Tales.

To gain new perspectives and freshness in this lavish weave between image and literature, Timorous Beasties subverted the convention of illustrating stories by tasking Steven to textually illustrate twenty-one toile patterns. The resulting fables and allegories include the dog that transforms into a snail (The Pocket God), the cormorant tricked by a talking fish (The Sunbird), the monstrous cabinet minister (The Exilium).

A book for our times Timorous Beasties: Toile Tales has been designed exquisitely for the sheer pleasure of gazing and reading. Possessing a surreal quality, the collection takes you out of time, suspending you in some ageless, indefinite realm.

’Let the wren rant and rave, it won’t notice that you are not joining in.’
(The Owl, in Timorous Beasties: Toile Tales)