'Surreal and provocative' designers Timorous Beasties open new showroom

Paul Simmons (L) and Alistair McAuley (R), founders of Timorous Beasties

“The eagle has landed”, is scribbled on a window in Edinburgh’s New Town.

Indeed. Glasgow design royalty are here.

Before the opening day of Timorous Beasties’ new showroom, the brand’s founders, Alistair McAuley and Paul Simmons, live painted this quote, along with thistle and bird sketches, while standing on the narrow balcony.

If it was their intention, they definitely succeeded in getting the velvet drapes twitching on the corner of Northumberland Street and Dundas Street.

The Glasgow designers, who established Timorous Beasties back in 1990, plan to make an impression in the Capital, with a 2500 square foot double-level open-to-the-public space that houses their entire collection.

“We are delighted to be opening this new showroom in Edinburgh, our second retail space in Scotland, and the home city of many of our loyal and longstanding customers,” says McAuley. “With over 30 years of Timorous Beasties’ pattern and print heritage on display, this is a wonderful and timely opportunity for the public to view the studio’s body of work in its entirety for the first time, and have the opportunity to purchase their favourite designs.”

Expect their brazen and much imitated brand of maximalism. When it comes to the typical New Town customer, this might be something for the new money, rather than the old. Among other things, on the ground level, there are shelves of bright cushions, emblazoned with jewel-coloured prints of bees, moths, dragonflies, and thistles.

You’ll also find a plush sofa upholstered in a bright fabric that looks like it’s been spray-painted by graffiti artists, complete with runny splotches of black and luminous pink. It sits in front of a backdrop of Rorschach-test-esque wallpaper.

Down the wallpaper-upholstered staircase, there are pieces including an armchair in an acid-bright floral print, as well as a display of a very familiar print, which is on a screen, drapes and a chaise longue. The Glasgow toile was launched back in 2004 and is one of their most iconic designs. Against a backdrop that includes high-rise flats and the Armadillo, it features “vagrants, vagabonds and misbehaving youths”, including naughty boys on bikes. There’s also now a New York toile, and an Edinburgh toile, which features Greyfriars Bobby, a tour bus and the Old Town, with various drunken shenanigans going on.

Since creating the original toile, which is celebrating its 20th birthday, the brand have created a huge portfolio of collaborations and commissions.

They’ve designed for Cameron House on Loch Lomond, which has their designs in its suites, and their gloriously gilded Golden Oriole Wallpaper Panels has pride of place in the Lobby Bar. They’ve emblazoned biscuit tins, pieces for Claridges and Harrods, the tail wrap for a jet, Johnnie Walker whisky packaging, the stage curtains at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Kate Bush’s tour programme, a golf fabric for Nike, and The Royal Bank of Scotland notes – including the £20, with squirrels on it – as well as part of the walkway at The Robert Burns Museum in Alloway.

Timorous Beasties, 35 Northumberland Street, Edinburgh, www.timorousbeasties.com, opens July 18