{"id":214752,"date":"2025-12-28T14:37:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-28T14:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214752\/"},"modified":"2025-12-28T14:37:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-28T14:37:20","slug":"the-window-artists-beautifying-high-street-shops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/214752\/","title":{"rendered":"The window artists beautifying High Street shops"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AshAsh Field\/Our Tiny Windows<\/p>\n

Artist Ash Field started painting his own coffee shop windows – he’s now travelling around the country with his creations<\/p>\n

Small businesses have a lot to contend with these days – not least standing out from the crowd and drawing customers in. Some of them are increasingly turning to window art to beautify their shopfronts and lure us in for a closer look. Who’s behind these beautiful creations – and is it really boosting business?<\/p>\n

\"ArtArt by Juliet Townsend<\/p>\n

Juliet Townsend turned her skill at painting her local pub’s windows into a full-time career<\/p>\n

Wearing a pair of headphones and paint-splattered clothes, the woman in the window is concentrating hard. She might be focussed on creating a snowy Victorian street scene, or an incredibly detailed polar bear, or cosy Alpine log cabins for Christmas – but the twist is, she’s doing it all backwards.<\/p>\n

The artist, Juliet Townsend, has been travelling all over her native Essex and further afield as demand for her window displays grows year by year.<\/p>\n

“I started during Covid by painting on the village pub’s windows,” she recalls.<\/p>\n

“I’d been working with them on some marketing plans, and the first thing I did was paint some remembrance poppies. Then I did an advent calendar where I went in every day and wiped the number off, and painted a new picture.<\/p>\n

“It sort of spiralled from there.”<\/p>\n

Given she’s designing the window from the inside, Juliet is having to paint in reverse.<\/p>\n

\"ArtArt by Juliet Townsend<\/p>\n

Ms Townsend said she loved working with glass as a medium – and her dream pane to paint would not involve any ladders to reach<\/p>\n

Five years on, window artistry is Juliet’s full time career, and over that time she’s created hundreds of designs for small businesses while building up a following on social media.<\/p>\n

She’s one of a growing number of window artists popping up all over England, including these Christmas-themed doodles in Shropshire<\/a> and some intricate wintery designs in Southampton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

An independent book shop in Maldon, Essex, has had several of Ms Townsend’s designs in recent years, featuring everything from woodland animals reading classic children’s books to specially-commissioned tie-ins for big book launches.<\/p>\n

“People will say, ‘oh, that’s really brightened my day’, or ‘I just really like your windows’,” says owner Olivia Rosenthal.<\/p>\n

“It really lifts the space. People often come in just to say that they look really lovely and then stay in and browse, maybe buy something.”<\/p>\n

\"MaldonMaldon Books<\/p>\n

Olivia Rosenthal said her customers in Maldon often told her the window displays brightened their days<\/p>\n

Former coffee shop owner Ash Field, 39, started painting his cafe windows “to bring people in” and uses the art and design skills he’d studied in the past.<\/p>\n

His artwork at a local cafe in Leigh-on-Sea near Southend in 2018 caught people’s attention: “Lots and lots of owners wanted to have it as well, and the next year even more of them did, and it became a real thing – especially around Christmas.”<\/p>\n

Mr Field said during the pandemic, lockdown played a part in the increase in demand as “businesses really wanted to do something to connect to the community” during a very uncertain time.<\/p>\n

“Then it really started to go kind of national, and I went as far up as Edinburgh, we went to Wales and travelled the country painting windows – it was really exciting,” he remembers.<\/p>\n

\"AshAsh Field\/Our Tiny Windows<\/p>\n

Ash Field said businesses wanted to connect with their communities during the Covid-19 pandemic<\/p>\n

Mr Field said he had gained more clients since moving to Bristol, including a regular customer in Taunton in Somerset.<\/p>\n

His designs are resplendent with gold details and textures and he explained how he did not do “any of the usual tropes – I think that would drive me mad as I feel like I’m primarily an artist”.<\/p>\n

One of his most memorable 2025 creations was a giant mural inside a new arts centre at Southend High School for girls.<\/p>\n

“That, by far, has got the most interest out of any window I’ve done, which shows that maybe there’s a new direction for me moving forward,” he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

\"ArtArt by Juliet Townsend<\/p>\n

Ms Townsend said her proudest moment of 2025 might have been this commission for Radio 2 in the Park… but it only survived for two weeks before being wiped clean<\/p>\n

With budgets tight and increasing costs, small businesses are commonly having to tighten their belts to continue trading. So why spend money on window art?<\/p>\n

“There’s something a little bit unexplainable about it, because it’s hard to quantify and it is a bit of a luxury to have someone paint on your windows,” says Ms Townsend, who charges a bespoke rate per day depending on the job.<\/p>\n

“If somebody gets it, they get it. If they don’t get it, if they don’t understand the reason for doing it, then they’re never going to.<\/p>\n

“Life’s too short for me to try and persuade them, and there’s plenty of people who do want to work with me and who do get it.”<\/p>\n

In September, she was commissioned to paint in the windows of a major superstore in Chelmsford’s high street to celebrate Radio 2 in the Park hosting its annual weekend at Hylands Park<\/a> in the city.<\/p>\n

“I was so proud of the process and the whole experience of it. I liked my design, I liked my execution and I liked the result.<\/p>\n

“The only bit I didn’t like was that [the shop] decided they only wanted it up for two weeks,” she laughs.<\/p>\n

“It was the most amount of work for the least amount of time, but that made it slightly cooler. I think it’s kind of funny.”<\/p>\n

\"ArtArt by Juliet Townsend<\/p>\n

Shops around the country use window art to attract customers and draw them in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ash Field\/Our Tiny Windows Artist Ash Field started painting his own coffee shop windows – he’s now travelling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-214752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}