Nick Hooper Design: About Us
This business came to life In Bangalow, N.S,W Australia in 1985, when two travellers, Lin and Nick Hooper created BOGART, drawing “all-over designs”, making the screens then hand screen printing water based paints on to T shirts.
Having had several partnerships, and having become, in turn, “Jungle Party”, “Hands On Design and Print” with Andy Kinnear and now “Nick Hooper Design”, the business has been producing original, handmade T-prints for our freethinking customers for over forty years.
We now find ourselves printing from the garden workshop in the port city of Southampton, UK.
Pretty much everything we make ourselves by hand, with input from the whole family. The unique images begin as artwork, drawn by Nick and our daughter Katy, inspired by art from around the world, nature and adaptations of indigenous patterns.
In a home-made dark room the designs are exposed to the light and then transposed onto hand-made silk screens.
Nick then prints each garment by hand onto natural materials using a carefully selected blend of eco-friendly inks, also hand tie-dying some designs beforehand to give an additional far-out visual effect.
You won’t find our clothing in department stores or shopping centres, but more likely under an oak tree, down a cobbled high street, in a field, out in the open air at one of the many of the wonderful craft and music events to which we bring our festival stall. You may have discovered us at a festival in the UK or through our friends across the world.
To compliment our hand-made products we also support a number of families and small businesses in Guatemala, Ecuador and Zimbabwe. The products we source directly from there are from craftspeople whose work we value, that is of the highest quality and that we can be assured is made ethically, under good working conditions.