Yorkshire quirks make fun gifts at couple's shop

Or maybe discover a Yorkshire paint chart with colours like ‘flatcap’ and ‘Yorkshire pud’.

These quirky regional adaptations of familiar items are among the many fun and interesting products on sale in Lighthouse Lane, a design-led gift shop run by husband and wife team Katie and Howard Shelmerdine.

The creative couple design and make stock for the business - our T&A Trader of the Week - as well as selling items from a carefully selected group of independent designers and makers.

Katie is originally from Barnsley, while Howard is from Huddersfield. They met in York 18 years ago when they both worked for a large DIY chain. “So between us we have South, West and North Yorkshire covered, which comes in very useful when we’re creating our regional Yorkshire designs,” says Katie.

“We moved to Haworth nine years ago when we started to think about raising a family - we love living here.”

After the couple’s son was born in 2014, Katie was able to take a year’s maternity leave.

“Being away from work and having a new little life to take care of gave us the detachment that we needed to evaluate what we wanted for the future,” she says. “I used some of the time to design five fabrics and prints for children’s rooms. I also painted a handful of local landscape scenes and started selling them through a local craft fair.”

As her leave came to an end, the couple saw that a small shop on Haworth's Main Street had come up for rent. “Not really knowing what we were doing, we took the plunge, quit our sensible jobs and opened a shop.”

Howard, particularly, had experience working in retail and both love the customer service element and talking to different people.

“That first year was very challenging but equally exciting, and we were so driven to be doing something that we really loved and to make sure it worked,” says Katie.

And work it did. Soon after they opened a second shop in Skipton. “We looked at shops in a few different locations but settled on Skipton as it’s an equally beautiful, historic place and also has a buzzing commercial centre which draws visitors in all week,” says Katie.

The more designs the couple came up with, the more ideas came to them. “Being in the shops is great as we can chat to customers, understand their likes and dislikes, and listen to which designs produce the biggest laughs,” says Katie. “ Creating our own products means that we can quickly try new designs in small volumes.”

Katie had always enjoyed art and loved to draw as a child. It was her favourite subject at school but she fell out of love with the subject at university. “I don’t think my work fitted with what was being taught at the time so I ended up with an English literature degree.”

She went on to work at a bank for nine years “but I always knew that something was missing and was inspired to start painting and drawing again after taking a short art course at a local college.”

The regional designs are Howard’s brainwave. “He has a quick and quirky sense of humour,” says Katie. “He looks for everyday items that we all recognise, for example the Highway Code or an eye test chart, and thinks about how he can give it a Yorkshire twist. They’re great fun to write as you have to get into a Yorkshire dialect mindset and think about how it would be written, while making the artwork aesthetically pleasing too.”

With a large product range, best sellers can change by season. “We have certain designs that always do really well - the colourful highland cows and giraffe are popular, along with the Yorkshire A-Z of conversation and the Yorkshire Periodic Table,” says Katie. “We tend to sell a lot of framed prints as we all like a happy home that’s personal to us. Smaller gifts like coasters, mugs and chopping boards do well in the lead up to Christmas.”

The couple's second son was born in 2017. Running a business while raising a young family can be a juggling act but with both children now at school it is “a bit less frantic,” says Katie. “We always ensure that either Howard or myself can do school runs, and we have an amazing and supportive team of staff around us.”

She believes it is important to let others know how creativity can be turned into a career. “We knew that we wanted a creative career but didn’t know anything about working in the art world or have any connections. So, being quite headstrong and independent, we decided to do it ourselves. I’ve been into our children’s school a few times to speak to the kids about this.”

They sell across three platforms online which have grown over the past few years. “We know that there’s so much more that we could do with this and we’re excited to see how it goes,” says Katie.

*lighthouselane.co.uk