Northampton memorabilia Fridge Street creator celebrates 250 illustrations

Kardi Somerfield started re-designing some of Northampton's most-loved buildings back in 2018 and two years on, she is marking her 250th illustration this week, which will be a surprise.

The artist grew up in Yorkshire before heading to the University of Northampton to study when she was a youngster. After graduating, she chose to settle down in the town and began working as a senior lecturer in Advertising and Digital Marketing at her old stomping ground.

After noticing a gap in the gift market, Kardi started drawing pictures of well-know buildings that celebrated the town, which she would sell as fridge magnets.

This idea soon snowballed into handmade memorabilia and collectable items, and now she has her own unique time capsule of quirky drawings and gifts.

She was always fond of practising artwork but it was not until her colleague coaxed her into pursuing drawing scenes of Northampton for a business idea.

It was then when she gave Fridge Street a serious go and now she has a line of tea towels and jigsaws, which are spin offs from her popular watercolour fridge magnet idea. And, after two years, this weekend she is going to mark 250 illustrations.

Every Saturday, the teacher's morning ritual is to sit down in her kitchen and create three new designs throughout the morning, which she draws, paints and digitises from photographs she has taken.

Kardi takes inspiration from the buildings us Northamptonians see every day, from where we like to socialise with friends or locations that have a special meaning to us.

Her most popular sales have included illustrations including the Guildhall in all its grandeur, the special Barratt Maternity Ward where many of us in the town were born and familiar Lamplighter pub.

Only last month she was named as an emerging entrepreneur in a Santander Universities programme, which gave her business £1,000 in capital to expand her product line.

One of Kardi's rules is that although she is available for one-off commissions, she does not favour nostalgic drawings because she is focusing on the town and how it appears in the present.

Kardi, whose favourite random illustration is the Budgerigar Society, off Spring Gardens, said: "Northampton is where I choose to live and work, and I'm proud of it.

"I've never really understood the desire to run a place down, it seems disloyal to me. Northampton is where I enjoy spending my free time and I've always enjoyed celebrating that.

"This business is about paying attention to what there is in this town. I don't do nostalgia because I want to pay attention and talk about now.

"A friend of mine at work, she said why don't you make collectables and it is now really rewarding when customers then tell me why they have bought them - it might be because that is where they had their first date or it is a place where their mum used to work."

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