Meet Peaseblossom: Dreaming Up Our New Unicorn Doll
Hi, friends! Today is Midsummer's Day and we've released a new limited-edition animal, Peaseblossom Unicorn. We thought: this is enough of a left turn for us that I should explain myself.
So, last winter we were exploring a collaboration with a company whose bestselling product is a glittery pink unicorn-themed object. Doesn't matter who, it didn't work out. Their unicorn was cute but it wasn't my style, and I remember thinking, "Shucks, this would work great if only their unicorn were the shimmering white of moonlight and lived in a hidden forest glade surrounded by magic. Oh well!" And I went back about my business, which was all very difficult at that point because I was 7 or 8 months pregnant.
A few weeks later, still heavily pregnant, I was supposed to design products for this fall. And suddenly I realized: unicorns are woodland creatures too! At least, they should be! I have these postcards from a unicorn tapestry I saw in France once, and they're of woodland animals and flowers in a beautiful medieval color palette. They would totally fit into the Village!
It was all very clear to me: we should make a unicorn that lives in the forest, she should be the shimmering white of moonlight, and her name should be Peaseblossom.
Peaseblossom is the name of one of the fairy queen's ladies-in-waiting in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The ladies-in-waiting are fairies too, obvs. "Peaseblossom" is an old word for a flower on a pea plant, either a sweet pea or a regular garden pea. The other fairy ladies-in-waiting are named Mustardseed and Cobweb. They're all named after tiny things that you might ignore but that are beautiful if you look, which is a cute and clever move by that Shakespeare... anyway I know all this because in eighth grade I was Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
So then I had my baby, Cornelia, in February. Meanwhile, everybody else in the Village worked on Peaseblossom. They figured out how our partners in Nepal could get shimmering silver linen for her horn and shimmering silver and ivory wool yarn for her mane and tail. They found some shimmering silvery gray cotton for her Oyster Shell Dress. And they worked on all the parts of her special trunk.