Stylepark In Residence, Konrad-Adenauer Ufer 3, 50668 Köln. Germasny.

January 16 - 22 2006 The show with Cheese

A crisp cold start to the year - off to germany with a huge lump of finest Montgommery's cheddar cheese, where we have been invited to take part at Stylepark in the Passagen - the off-site to IMM Cologne.

We shared a dark little jewel of a room with the digital printing agency Makom and doyennes of telecommunications Hulger, bringing along Zimzum and Pit Green. Try out the phones, check out the print, play micro golf, hang out with glamorous germans (indeed) have a drink and sample a nice bit of cheese. If Neal's Yard opened in Cologne, all sorts of preconceptions would be up for substitution. A fine start to the year heralding all sorts of entertainment.

A word about Makom. They are a German company based in Kassel who specialise in printing awesome gigantic digital images on to very big buildings. They also do small things and they can print on pretty much anything. For example for Cologne we were wondering what to sit on etc and the mighty Clemens German distributor of Hulger amongst other things suggested that we buy some furniture from IKEA and print on it. Before the week was out we had 2 sofas, a vitrine, a mirror, four tables and more light up signs than you could shake a stick at, those boys are fast, they even made 2 sofas and printed on the fabric. Makom have an inkjet printer that you can put a door through, amazing. Have a look at their website, http://www.makom.net . They use titanium as a base for the white ink, many printers use aluminium, the titanium enables them to get incredibly true colours. We also had the Stuhlball from Zimzum Studio, a giant football that you can sit on, made by the people that do the balls for the bundesliege. So we had a very comfortable week, playing microgolf, eating cheese, talking our heads off, saying it with a hulger, and waiting to see if anyone dared to kick the stuhlball.

Thanks to Clemens, Miki, Fabian, Tina, Rajko, Pete, Silke, stylepark and everybody who came along and had a natter and to Julian Cope for the header quote.

Exhibitors

For website links to all the above exhibitors see the DB Database.