Merle Made Tales specialises in traditional illustrations that reflect the natural world, fairy tales and the universality of stories.
Launched in 2016 by Illustrator Merle Hunt, Merle Made Tales creates delightful card, print, wrapping paper and stationery illustrations. These are focussed on seasonal themes such as snow laden Nordic fairytales for winter, blushing florals for spring, famous literary love quotes for summer and darkening forests, with a witch or two, for Autumn.
Armed with a basketful of brushes and a mechanical pencil always in hand, Merle creates work that is often small in scale and filled with decorative detail. Merle’s illustrations tell stories inspired by nature, literature and fairytales.
Merle draws inspiration from the works of Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and Kay Nielsen, whose rich and magical ink and watercolour illustrations at the turn of the 20th century, gave rise to the ‘Golden Age of Illustration’. This was a time of Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and the Pre-Raphaelites. Says Merle in her own words, “My images always tell stories, in fact, I think illustrators are essentially storytellers. I find endless inspiration from literature and fairytales. I enjoy capturing and evoking the mood, the magic, the feeling and something of the internal yearning of the writing or the characters I portray.”
This sense of nature and narrative extends into the sourcing of all Merle Made Tales products where much attention is taken to ensure the ecological sustainablitly and long lasting quality of every item.
