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SOME FUTURE CATASTROPHE: On Orford Ness (after Sebald).

In May last year, we finally made the long overdue pilgrimage to Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast, tracing the untraceable footsteps of WG Sebald.

"One of the men sitting idly on the harbour wall offered to take me over for a few pounds and fetch me later after I had had a look around. As we crossed the river in his blue-painted boat, he told me that people still mostly avoided Orfordness. Even the beach fishermen, who were no strangers to solitude, had given up night-fishing out there after a few attempts, allegedly because it wasn't worth their while, but in reality because they couldn't stand the god-forsaken loneliness of that outpost in the middle of nowhere, and in some cases even became emotionally disturbed for some time...

... For a long while I stood on the bridge that leads to the former research establishment. Far behind me to the west, scarcely to be discerned, were the gentle slopes of the inhabited land; to the north and south, in flashes of silver, gleamed the muddy bed of a dead arm of the river, through which now, at low tide, only a meagre trickle ran; and ahead lay nothing but destruction. From a distance, the concrete shells, shored up with stones, in which for most of my lifetime hundreds of boffins had been at work devising new weapons systems, looked (probably because of their odd conical shape) like tumuli in which the mighty and powerful were buried in prehistoric times with all their tools and utensils, silver and gold. My sense of being on ground intended for purposes transcending the profane was heightened by a number of buildings that resembled temples or pagodas, which seemed quite out of pace in these military installations. But the closer I came to these ruins, the more any notion of a mysterious isle of the dead receded, and the more I imagined myself amidst the remains of our own civilization after its extinction in some future catastrophe."

The Rings of Saturn, WG Sebald

TO THE EAST: From Quilter Street to Brick Lane.

The April page of our 2012 calendar celebrates Record Store Day. It depicts a walk through a part of east London very close to our home and hearts.

The title, which is also the record found at the end of the story, is borrowed from this:

As always, this month's page is available to download as a desktop wallpaper.

A CORMORANT ON THE CANAL: From Little Venice to Limehouse Basin.

A little lower than the city, Regents Canal forms a submerged highway for slow travel, a sliver of wilderness that trickles in from the greenbelt and the bucolic unknown beyond. This time, we follow the water downstream: flowing past wild dogs, warthogs and peacocks in the Zoological Gardens, navigating subtle gradients through lock after lock and traversing the one-time hinterlands behind King's Cross where close-knit waterborne communities resist new tides as Victorian gasometers are dismantled above them.

Over the years, walking this route, we've grown to know a few of the fowl that populate the canal. There are some always to be found in the same place such as the white bird with the red head near Broadway Market, and during springs we've watched gosling and scrappy baby coots grow up. The most enigmatic bird of all though is the mysterious cormorant, a seabird retired to the city. You might see him near Victoria Park or atop the floating duckhouse in Kinglsland Basin, but on this day, we found him perched proudly on Camden Lock, drying his wings in the sun.

At Angel, we briefly reconnect with the streets while the water carries narrowboats through the long tunnel beneath (once helped along by the crew lying on their backs, their feet walking the tunnel's ceiling). Back on the towpath, we are home in the east. Mansions and tall white houses with lawns and gazebos overlooking the water are replaced by the last crumbling warehouses and the shiny new flats for new modern people: shiny new denizens of Hoxton, De Beauvoir Town, Haggerston and Broadway Market

Mile End Park offers utopian views past wind turbines to the distant glass towers of Thatcheropolis. Here, the Palm Tree stands strong still, meters from the spot where the first Doodlebug fell. The landscape grows rougher for the final stretch, until suddenly, emerging from under a succesion of bridges, we're in the strange, aspirational yester-world of luxury dockside condos and sleek motor launches. But this space is too enclosed, too claustrophobic, to mark our journey's end so we follow the canal to the final narrow lock where, unceremoniously, it is engulfed by the thick, brown Thames.

A pint or two at the Prospect of Whitby is well deserved.

TRAVELOGUES: A collection of literary journeys.

Our February page features twenty-nine books, some real, some with covers redesigned and others entirely fictitious. An alternative title might have been A Thousand Miles of Conventional Sentiment, after the chapter Rebecca Solnit devotes to literature in her definitive survey of walking, Wanderlust. It was a huge inspiration for this year's calendar and highly recommended if the topic has piqued your interest.

BOOTS ON AND READY is now available for an extraordinarily reasonable $9 from BuyOlympia.com. Download a wallpaper for free below.

LETTERBOXING: Crossing Dartmoor in the Snow.

BOOTS ON & READY begins with a mid-winter walk on a frozen Dartmoor, following ancient paths between tors and stopping for one-sided conversations with ponies. If you'd like the moor to talk back, it's worth remembering that this is the birthplace of Letterboxing and, on occasion, a glimpse into a crevice between two boulders will reveal a tin box waiting to give up its secrets.

The 2012 calendar is still available from BuyOlympia.com and we'll also be continuing the tradition of providing free desktop wallpapers for you to download each month.

WORD DRAWING (WUTHERING HEIGHTS) is the first of a new series we're currently working on.

The text comes from the latter part of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. When we read it, we both imagined a picture. In our collaborative process, we can't read each other's minds, so sometimes creating one end result feels like a compromise. These word drawings are a way for us to keep the image pure: By recreating the words in watercolour, the picture remains imagined."

Digital archival prints are available now exclucively through BuyOlympia.com.

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME AGAIN in which the block requires a touch of festive décor.

For the final time this year, the gift of a desktop wallpaper

And just a reminder, our 2012 calendar, BOOTS ON & READY, is still available from BuyOlympia.com.

In the UK, BOOTS ON & READY is now available at the following quality retailers: Bookartbookshop (London), X Marks the Bökship (London), Of Cabbages & Kings (London), Frank (Whitstable) and The Made in the Shade Maisonette (Glasgow).

A wearable companion piece to our 2012 calendar, the BOOTS ON BADGES feature the sun and title from the cover, a Dartmoor pony from January and a pair of unlaced boots. Walk on.

BONFIRE NIGHT in which an old tradition seems new again because of the company kept.

Our year of wallpaper downloads is almost at an end. We started these monthly gifts back at the beginning of 2011 when ACROSS THE SEA sold out so quickly that a lot of people were left without a real life physical copy to hang on their wall.

And it could happen again! If you would like a copy of our 2012 calendar, BOOTS ON & READY, please do order soon to avoid disappointment.

WHAT A DISASTER! in which wanderlust gives way to the threat of calamity.

On an early spring day in a north London cemetery, having emerged from a period of unrest, we came across a gravestone inscribed with a quote from Michel de Montaigne: "One must always have one's boots on and be ready to leave."

Announcing the launch of our 2012 calendar, BOOTS ON & READY.

We've spent a year exploring on foot, undertaking expeditions akin to pilrgrimage to remote shingle spits, following in literary footsteps or seeking out connections to artistic heroes. Closer to home, we've tread and retread some of our favourite routes along the Regents Canal, across Hampstead Heath in the snow and, as always, through the streets of our neighbourhood. Some journey's were only dreamt about (following the Thames from source to mouth for example), others read about in books. There is also a maze.

You can buy it now from the good folks at BuyOlympia.com

Buy BOOTS ON & READY here.

For wholesale enquiries, please contact them directly.

THE BLUE WHALE in which another two characters spend an afternoon at the museum.

RIDE INTO THE SUN in which two familiar characters leave the city behind and take to the high seas.

The hoodie boys venture forth in a paddle-less canoe in this, the eighth installment, of our free-monthly-calendar-page-wallpaper-download. The current carries them down the Thames, past the docks at Tilbury and the white cliffs of southern England, out into the open ocean where a violent storm may well have meant a watery grave for our heroes were it not for a benevolent orange octopus. In the end, washed up on a bleak shingle shore, the boys take the peculiar decison to burn their vessel. They dance around the fire until nothing's left but embers to sleep by.

UNDER THE MILKY WAY TONIGHT in which our six characters travel afield to view the summer sky from a different place.

ANOTHER MAN'S TREASURE in which detritus spanning several centuries is collected from the riverbank.

At low tide, the shores of the River Thames make for excellent beachcombing. The river takes the corners off everything it hides: red bricks and rooftiles, patterned ceramics, earthenware, coloured glass and bones of dubious origin.

Once your eye becomes accustomed to spotting them, you'll find a surprising number of clay pipe stems. These date back to the nineteenth century when Londoners would buy their tobacco pre-packed in pipes. Once smoked, they were tossed away like cigarette butts. These and other artifacts (intriguing and mundane) are displayed in our June calendar page. The digital version can be downloaded to one's desktop by clicking on the appropriate size below.

Here is one tiny part of the 2012 wall calendar: A pebble from the shingle beach at Dungeness. (We think it's a bit of an optical illusion... Looks like an actual stone at first, right?) We are at work on the calendar now. Inspired by our many adventures in Britain, it will be released in the autumn, printed simultaneously in the US and the UK.

FINGERS MAKE EARLY FLOWERS in which one character notices new life in the neighbourhood.

Spring can be very much how you imagine. On the same morning we turned the page to peek at what we'd drawn for May, Jeremy actually did re-pot the cacti. And Jamie's been doing lots of painting and looking out the window. The original idea here was that sometimes spring really lives up to its reputation. Grey London becomes more colourful. Sometimes when we look at the months we made a year ago, they seem almost prescient. But who knows, the month has only just begun...

THE WHOLE WORLD in which a self-appointed cartographer attempts to circumnavigate 365 days.

We were inspired by the Magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library to make a kind of map of the whole calendar, and by extension, the Atherton Lin world. The tree from the boy's blanket in January domimates the centre (the leaves were cut from our SWIRLIES cards), in the western ocean you'll see the whale from September and the hoodie boys adrift in their paddle-less canoe from August. Details of May pop up on that hemisphere's largest island, while in the east you might recognise the landscape from July. There's an island shaped like Orford Ness, as alluded to in last month's collection of maps and travel books (more about that in 2012) and a border comprised of a veritable Atherton Lin lexicon, including symbols representing all our characters.

We have two new prints available exclusively from the good folks at buyolympia.com.

COUNTRIES OF THE WORLD was developed from orginal watercolour drawings of the shapes of all 230 states and territories, reducing them to equal dimensions and arranging them in order of size. Those equipped with an Atherton Lin TRAVELOGUE will recogise the design from its opening and closing pages.

HEBRIDES, FAEROES, FAIR ISLE was originaly developed for THE FOX IS BLACK desktop wallpaper project. It's a sort of fantasy of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland: a journey not yet undertaken. The title comes from the Shipping Forcast, a string of place names and reports of stormy weather read in an antithetically calm voice. Places that, for most of us, exist more in the imagination than in reality.

A ROUTE MADE BY DRAWING in which the discovery of a traveller's collection coincides with the onset of restlessness.

THE NIGHT DESK in which a remiss correspondent nods off before writing the letter. What a shame!

This month's page is now available for download. Its location is based on the hotel receipt featured in February 2009 and on one of our Four Winter Greetings. Just as the story relates, it was indeed found in the pocket of a FRENCH CORDUROY SUIT bought at a vintage clothes shop.

Rigorous research has revealed the Hotel Cordon Bleu to be located in the town of Sucé-sur-Erdre in the Pays de la Loire region of France. One day we'll go there and tell you all about it.

Happy New Year!

ACROSS THE SEA, our 2011 calendar, has proven very popular and we've sold out. Thanks everyone who bought copies! Unfortunately, this also means that many people who wanted one this year are going without.

So we've decided to post each month as a free downloadable wallpaper throughout the year.

Choose your screen size from the options below:

Christmas Card Sale!

Are you sending Christmas cards this year? Yes? Maybe? You would but you can't find anything quite special enough? Well perhaps this will convince you...

We are now selling our TURN ON THE LIGHTS set of six cards for £5. Bargain! And if you buy three sets, we'll throw in a fourth for absolutely nothing! Happy Hols folks.

See Atherton Lin at Tate!

Well sort of... we're very happy to announce that ACROSS THE SEA, our 2011 calendar, is now available at both Tate Modern and Tate Britain shops.

ACROSS THE SEA is here! Boxes and boxes of beautiful calendar have made walking around our flat nigh impossible.

See more images and maybe even buy one here.

Our 2011 calender is almost ready to send to press. We're a little late this year but we think it's going to be worth it. These are some details, just to give you a taster/teaser.

It's called Across the Sea.

The update of this site was enabled by Virginia Phongsathorn, who let us photograph our products in her studio and include details of her paintings, and Colin Quinn of Quinnford & Scout, who contributed a lot of painstaking design and production work. Thank you very much, Virginia and Colin. We owe you one.

Our new badge sets are here. The Souvenir Badges, Jacket Badges, Rock Badges and Little Boat Badges are all pieces of the Atherton Lin story. Worn on their own, there's something a bit inscrutable... which is what we like about them. You can look and buy here on the site under Things We Make.

We are finishing production on the ATHERTON LIN TRAVELOGUE, a 122 page notebook. The covers are hand-printed using a Gocco PG-5. The interiors feature a pattern made up of all the countries of the world, illustrations of fantastical modes of transport, a handy journey planning index and lots of blank pages. The notebooks will be available for sale in just a couple of weeks. Hope you will like!

We listen to BBC 6 Music pretty much every day. We believe it is one of the most important sources for new and experimental music in the UK, and thus contributes to the culture of the nation at large. Today, BBC director general Mark Thompson publicly recommended, amongst other cuts, the closure of BBC 6 Music. But there is hope: The Guardian reports that "BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons said that if there was a big enough public response about the cuts, he would ask management to rethink its strategy." Please get in touch with the BBC Trust and ask them to save BBC 6 Music. Send an email to srconsultation@bbc.co.uk. Join the Facebook group Save BBC 6 Music. In a humble effort of our own, we have designed this little logo. If you have a blog, flickr, tumblr et cetera, please post this logo to help spread the word. So far, the BBC has received thousands of complaints about this decision. It's not too late: The trust has opened up the discussion, and our numbers can help save this important music institution.

We were honoured to create desktop wallpaper for Kitsune Noir. You can view and download it here. The story of this hopeful bay and imaginary ships continues in our new card/disc design, ACROSS THE SEA.

Our sets of illustrated recordable discs are back! Series 1 & Series 2 are both available again from buyolympia.com.

Hello friends and lovers... Have a fun Valentine's Day! Love, Atherton Lin

January, as seen on the wall of artist Hollie Chastain at her home in Tennessee.

A small original watercolour, as seen on the shelf of designer Carl Williamson and filmmaker Matt Wolf in their Brooklyn flat.

Be good to each other this winter. Love, Atherton Lin

One of our calendars will be in this charity silent auction at Space 15 Twenty in Los Angeles. Other items include art by Susan Cianciolo, original sketches from Where the Wild Things Are and one of Flea's bass guitars. This turned out to be the second L.A.-based charity event we contributed to this season – which makes us proud because we love that unusual town, and we know from our time there the importance of groups like Children of the Night.

We have a little piece of art in the group show Shameless, Nameless & Recycled at Pop Gallery in Culver City (Los Angeles). The concept was to exhibit something somehow recycled: Our tiny watercolour was an element of a greeting card design. It is to be shown anonymously, so we can't say anything more... Other artists include Doug Aitken and Geoff McFetridge. Everything is 100 bucks, and the money goes to L.A.-based charities.

The next two Saturdays, the 12th and 19th, we will be at the Christmas Fairs at Abney Hall on Church Street in historic Stoke Newington village. We will be featuring our season's greetings set, TURN ON THE LIGHTS, and our 2010 calendar, STAND UP STRAIGHT. We have also reproduced the FOUR WINTER GREETINGS set because it is one of our favourite items. Stoke Newington is in northeast London, just up from Kingsland Road, and is a great neighbourhood for Christmas shopping with a classic British feeling.

Tomorrow, the 5th of December, we will selling our wares at the Chelsea Old Town Hall on King's Road as part of the We Make London Christmas Fair. It's set to be super exciting and festive, with carols from The Furies Choir, a café and a "speed crafting" session from Lady Luke Rules OK, not to mention loads of awesome exhibitors. Time to get Christmas shopping, and much better than the high street, no?

Winter is beautiful, with its bare trees and big scarves. But we daydream of warmer months and the feeling of going barefoot. With this wishful thinking in mind, we have completed our Four Summer Greetings set. It is available from our Etsy shop as well as buyolympia.com. The first shops to stock the set will be Of Cabbages And Kings, in London's Stoke Newington neighbourhood, and Here And Now Gallery, in the lovely seaside town of Falmouth.

Our 2009 calendar is our biggest project to date. It took almost all of 2008 to create! We have received an incredible response and can barely keep up with the orders. You can buy the calendar online from buyolympia.com The calendar has also been picked up by several very cool shops. The newest stockists are: Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), Institute of Contemporary Art (London) and Marc Jacobs stores in the U.S., London and Paris. A full list of shops is available on our stockists page.