Veliko Marinchevski, a renowned Bulgarian graphic artist, is currently working in mainland China. His works are in great demand - amazing graphic paintings made with an ordinary attention to detail. Veliko is polite and shy in his quite voice and manners. 

Several months ago, while waiting in a popular Italian restaurant in downtown Sofia, he was waiting for Silvia and Konstantin, both owners of the recently established small family company yamabahari, famour for its upmarket linen beach towels. Inspired by frequent trips to Japan and an amazing winter spent in Iceland, the small Bulgarian family company yamabahari (yama means mountain in Japanese and bahari translates to sea in Swahili) launched in April 2015 its first luxury linen beach towel with a limited edition of 200 pieces which were almost immediately sold out. 

Silviya and Konstantin were looking for an illustration that can be used for their first wool blanket. And Veliko, known for his Japanese-inspired paintings, was the obvious choice.

The restaurant's table was filled with graphic referances, only a small room left for an espress cup and couple of cappuccino's. Then Veliko showed them what he had in mind for the wool blanket: “I remember each of my paintings. This one is made in Japan, in western parts of Tokyo. Each day I was greeted by different butterflies. The most amazing ones were the Miyama-Karasuageha ones, just beautiful. I saw a Japanese girl there - delicate, elegant like a butterfly. And I made the illustration for yamabahari with the butterflies and the girl.”

The decision was made. Silviya and Konstantin contacted the factory, they said it will be possible to weave the blanket in the selected colours and with the selected motif from the illustration.

Couple of months later the blanket arrived from Lithuania. Not only it was made from the highest possible quality of New Zealand wool, but it was exclusively produced in only 121 copies (only available here: http://www.yamabahari.com/collections/wool-blankets/products/cardinalis-100-new-zealand-wool-blanket). And the motif of Veliko's painting was there.