Long Walk - What‘ the Story with the Red House?? Well let us tell you...
What is the story with the Red House? That‘s a question we have been asked over and over this year, and we never tire of telling it‘s story because we love it so much. Get yourself a cuppa tea before reading on ;-)
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The Long Walk design turned out great and so many people really love it and we believe that is because it was created by our customers, so here is the story of the Long Walk:
We sent out a feedback form to find out preferences of new designs and design ideas in December of 2018 and what stood out to us was how many people were looking for a Galway design and a few suggestions pointed towards landmarks in Galway such as the Long Walk. The Long Walk is a famous walk in Galway and has been written about in many poems and songs such as the song 'Galway Girl' by Steve Earle.
When we started to play around with design ideas we loved the first sketches Paul came up with of the Long Walk and decided to go ahead with finalising the design and added the Red House to stand out and give the otherwise white design a splash of colour. (The Long Walk is full of colourful houses, but instead of printing a design in multi-colours we decided to do the above)
Our first print run was for Bloom which is a big event in Dublin and people there absolutely loved it and in particularly liked the red house.
That made me think that I would love to find the owner of the actual Red House on the Long Walk in Galway, because I believed that they should own the t-shirt on which their house was featured.
So we went on a mission to find the owner! We put it out on social, mail and even put it forward to radio channels - but nothing concrete came back.
Finally we decided to take a trip to Galway ourselves and simply knock on the door!
We didn‘t know what to expect, for all we knew the house could have been rented out, ownership could have been changed or it could have even been airbnb‘d.
So off we went, with t-shirts in tow and stood in front of the red door house in Galway. (photo below).
After some minutes of anxiously waiting as no one opened, finally a lady creaked the door open looking at us all surprised and wondering what we wanted (she probably thought we were some random sales people!)
We quickly explained who we were and why we wanted to meet her and her whole being lit up. She was delighted to meet us!
She invited us in and told us all about the house and the story of the red paint.
Do you want to hear it?
So Lady June lives in the house for over 40 years, raised a son and two daughters there. One day she had urged her son to paint the front of the house, wanting a light pink colour. On the second coat of paint, while mixing the paint, the son must have been slightly too generous with the colour or maybe he got distracted or misunderstood June? In any case he started painting the front of the house not thinking twice about it and all of a sudden instead of a subtle pink hue the house had big red streaks in it!! Of course he needed to paint the whole house over again, and that created the colour it is today.
June told us that she get‘s letters from people all over the world addressed to 'Lady of the Red House', Galway, Ireland and until now no letter failed to arrive at her house door.
We loved chatting to her so much, and she was so generous with her time and stories. The Long Walk became one of our favourite designs and customers love it just as much, representing a beautiful part of the country.
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