FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
nationthailand

A banquet for the bedroom

A banquet for the bedroom

The ar-'tists' at Tisgraphy put your favourite foods and favourite pets on pillows and personal accessories

STARTING OUT in the retail business, you just have to keep trying. The amazing success that Morakot Chomboon and her boyfriend Nawaporn Thanmarutwipark have enjoyed first in Hua Hin and now at Mega Bangna on the capital’s outskirts reveals nothing about their dismal sales when they first started their business.
Tistgraphy – the shop’s name comes from “artist” and “photography” – sells home decor and lots of other items that have images of food and animals printed on them. The effect is quite stunning – go to sleep on a pillow with a picture of tom yum kung on it and you’re bound to have some delicious dreams. 
Morakot graduated in communication design from King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang and previously worked with a leading event organiser. Nawaporn studied decorative arts at Silpakorn University and initially helped out at his family’s canvas factory. Both of them, though, were bursting with creativity and wanted to try a venture of their own.
Four years ago they screened some of Nawaporn’s drawings of animals on clothing and decor items and put them on sale at a gift fair hosted by the Promenade community mall in Bangkok. No one was interested.
“It was more like a hobby for us at the time, but it was upsetting that our products didn’t sell,” says Morakot. “So then we decided to try the Cicada night market in Hua Hin and we hit the jackpot – our pillows sold like hotcakes! Someone posted a photo of one of them on the social networks and suddenly everyone was calling us the ‘dog-pillow people from Hua Hin’. 
“That’s when we switched to the transfer technique for a line of more colourful prints, using popular dog breeds as the motifs.”
The shop at Mega Bangna is a recent undertaking. It also stocks T-shirts, polyester padded tote bags, handbags, scarves, key rings and coin bags – all printed with Nawaporn’s sketches of kittens and dogs. If you have a particular canine as a favourite, they’ve got a Bulldog and a French Bulldog, Labrador and Golden Retrievers, a Pomeranian, a Shih Tzu, a Siberian Husky, a Beagle and Yorkshire, Jack Russell and Bull Terriers.
The pillows are still as popular as ever, now with images of well-known Thai dishes – and many of the comfy cushions are shaped like food, too. You can snooze on a prawn, a fried mackerel, a grilled squid, or even a snakeskin gourami.
“We wanted a new design that would really wow people at first sight and decided to print the most familiar Thai dishes on pillows, starting with the fried mackerel,” Morakot says. “We use top-quality polyester, which has a texture that’s perfect for our transfer-printing technique and retains the colours’ brightness. They’re filled with the best synthetic fibres and they last a long time.”
 And a separate set of round pillows is printed with images of shrimp-paste chilli sauce, pad thai, somtam, green curry with chicken and even a Northern-style khan tok dinner.
Tistgraphy also has branches at Hua Hin’s Cicada night market and Bangkok’s Rod Fai market on Srinakarin Road. 
 
 
FILLING DREAMS
>>Tistgraphy is on the second floor of Mega Bangna and open daily from 10 to 10. 
>>Get in touch at (090) 971 1132 or the Tistgraphy page on Facebook.
 
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