[caption id="attachment_7050" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Musée 10x7 dark tan; photography and page layout design by Johannes van Kan"][/caption] If you read my Musée story recently, you’ll recall it ended with a cliff-hanger … but it turned out well. You may remember we’d made an album featuring Christian [Oth's] images, but he'd never seen it. We were nervous. Well we finally did catch up, and he loved it. Then Johannes [van Kan’s] album of Virginia and Richard’s wedding won at WPPI. You can view his complete album on Youtube (no audio) or Vimeo (recommended: this is the video he showed on our UK tour last September). Thank you for the great response to our original post, and also to the crowds of people who came to admire Musée at WPPI and FOCUS. Now we've had your feedback we can put the final touches to product and pricing. Meantime I can tell you a little more about the product, because it's much more than just "another cover material" as someone said.

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Musée is French for museum, and it’s been said that turning the pages of a Queensberry album is like walking through the halls of an art museum. We like that, especially since Heather’s goal with her design team was to set a new brand standard, based on exclusivity and museum conservation quality. The most obvious signs of both are Musée’s pages, which have their own story. They’re 100% cotton watercolour paper from the French Arches® mill. The exact origins of Arches are lost in time, but it's believed to date from the year Columbus sailed to America. You can read its history on its website, as well as some of the famous names associated with it. We’ll be proud to add those of Queensberry and our clients! But there’s something else we like about the museum metaphor. When you think of it, although a museum should have its own serenity and beauty, really it exists for the exhibits, in this case the photography. Both the album and photography must be beautiful … but then there’s another level. Album and photography are both means to an end – telling a personal story that we want to enjoy and share forever. If we forget that, we forget what in the end endows the work with significance and value. But with Musée Heather also wanted a feeling of intimacy … of unfolding a precious object to get to the precious memories within. Johannes’ words fit perfectly with her own intentions: “I want something small and jewel-like … precious and intimate like the memories it contains… I want it to have that feeling of authority that the family Bible has. I’d like it if the leather had laughter lines, like an old couch, as if it had absorbed the wisdom and memories and conversations of the people who had sat in it…” Hence Musée’s embossed leather wrap-around cover, the French ribbon closure and the Solander box that encloses and protects it all. (By the way, if you appreciate serendipity, these boxes were first developed by Dr Daniel Charles Solander, a botanist and librarian who visited New Zealand on Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific in 1792.)

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I hope I’ve painted a picture of a multi-dimensional product – beautiful imagery and design elements ... storytelling ... artisanship ... and of course exclusivity. Because like Queensberry itself, Musée is not for everyone. We talk to our clients about selling “Good, Better and Best”. Musée is Queensberry’s Best. Our design team designed it with an attitude of no compromise – for people who want only the best ... beautiful photography, discerning design and the best materials in a product that requires the highest level of artisanship to produce. Cheers, Ian PS Musée will be offered in four sizes (10x7 and 14x10, vertical and horizontal) and two cover colours (black and dark tan). Also DVD albums and 7x5 digital copies. We'll be publishing more photography, full product details and final pricing at the end of this month. If I don't already have your address please email me if you’d like us to notify you. For those of you already looking to buy, think mid-April. PPS My favourite email said, "...I am sitting here almost in tears at these most beautiful stories ... What I love about … Queensberry is that you totally get the passion and art involved in being a wedding photographer”. Thank you, Rachel. Those stories are all true and I'm glad so many people enjoyed reading them.