Today we’d like to introduce you to Pbody Dsign.
Hello Pbody Dsign, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
The seeds for Pbody Dsign began during an artist’s residency Whitney attended in Brittany, France in 2008. There, sketchbooks were filled with drawings of women in traditional Breton dress whimsically exaggerated in playful situations and strange architectural details. On return home from the residency, many of these ended up on a variety of dishware she made. Later, the number and types of objects made at Pbody Dsign grew and grew, adding elements from the garden, vintage shops, travel, and history inspiring new wares in ceramics, cloth, and paper.
Drawing is always the starting point for each piece she makes. She loves experimenting with materials, using her years as an award-winning illustrator and educator to inform her work. Her book Playing with Sketches is chocked full of creative exercises and has been the basis for numerous workshops in the United States, Mexico, and China.
The limited-edition ceramics are individually hand-painted in small batches. You’ll also occasionally find one-of-a-kind pieces such as the collage cover sketchbooks! Everything is made in small batches [sometimes very small batches!]
More recently, husband Paul Ryan joined Pbody Dsign in 2018. He is trained as a painter and worked as a print designer until he decided his organizational skills, digital expertise, endless patience, and love of Whitney’s work would make for another great partnership.
He routinely offers sobering advice that Whitney sometimes takes.
Pbody Dsign is located in Baltimore, MD USA, and has sold to clients throughout North America and Europe.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
As primarily an editorial illustrator working for national publications, Whitney’s problem-solving concepts worked equally well for book jacket covers, institutional clients, and theater production posters. Working as an editorial illustrator has allowed Whitney a great amount of freedom to develop imagery based on her own concepts. The work made under the brand Pbody Dsign is entirely different. It uses more personally driven images, things that don’t have to relate directly to a pre-set narrative. Doing work under a different name gave Whitney another kind of freedom, away from an established career with certain types of clients. The interface with the ultimate consumer is also different. With her illustration studio work, the consumer was the company’s art director than their readership. With Pbody, it’s directly to an individual, more one-on-one via sales at art markets and fairs. She gets to actually meet the user which is fun and exciting.
That describes the relationship between Whitney’s two artistic directions and will help the reader understand why she can say doing work for Pbody Dsign was relatively smooth. to start. There was no pressure from deadlines, only the trial and error of doing ceramics then later home goods in cloth and paper. But there wasn’t financial pressure to make it profitable. It was really a pleasure pursuit that turned into a business. Once a small client base was established, the struggle was more about keeping up with emails, doing marketing/social media photography and posts, and finding sources to enable wholesale sales. That’s where Paul came into the picture.
The Venn diagram of their tastes means they share many similar interests with Whitney coming up with ideas and Paul being the sober sounding board. The struggle currently is recovering from economic changes because of the pandemic. For almost 2 years, face-to-face markets were not happening which pushed Pbody into building up their online shop more. Whitney and Paul really enjoy meeting people in person and have missed that part of the venture.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Pbody Dsign started out doing illustrated ceramic pieces yet the play and practice of making images and patterns on the surface [while also thinking about form] opened the door to working on virtually any surface. We are home-proud folks, so we concentrated on home goods. Likely there are other areas where Pbody Dsign ideas could be used, but for now we are centered on home!
We are proud of the quality of our work which is reflected in how we produce in small batches. The work we produce is special and our customers are guaranteed that only a few people will ever own pieces like theirs.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Pbody Dsign wares are narrative and illustrative. They tell stories of being in nature, looking at art and architecture, and find humor in unlikely places. The ideas are from our point of view. This is important to whomever is “reading” each piece. We are showing our customers what we see in the world. That gives a viewer a certain freedom while also limiting the story to give it shape.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pbodydsign.com
- Instagram: @pbodydsign
Image Credits
Whitney Sherman
Pbody Dsign
