Avocet, Aldeburgh - a Suffolk Cards stockist

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AVOCET, which stocks the full Suffolk Cards range, is a cornucopia of cards, prints, stationery, wooden toys, artists' materials and locally made pottery. Whether you want a wooden bird carving to stand on your window sill, a model yacht for Aldeburgh's boating pool, or a local (and fiendishly difficult) jigsaw puzzle, you will find it here. It is one of those shops that repay careful exploration and lengthy browsing.

Now eleven years old, Avocet was started in 1997 by potter and landscape architect Harry Barclay. Its roots go further back than this, however, to the wonderful, geranium-decked Milestone House Pottery in the nearby village of Yoxford.

What began as a pottery featuring the work of Harry's wife, Biddy Rose, and her mother, Diana Rose, gradually became a shop, selling not only locally made pottery (including Harry's own terra cotta planters) but a range of fine art cards, wooden toys and craft goods as well.

The move to Aldeburgh meant that it was possible to stock a wider range of goods. But today pottery made by Diana and Biddy Rose is still featured in the gallery which is part of the shop – and in which Harry also sells a selection of prints ranging from Matisse to the three large prints which I publish – those of Stanley Spencer's Southwold 1937, Serena Hall's Southwold and Victoria Parker-Jervis's painting of Aldeburgh Beach.

He also publishes cards of his own. At the height of the great Aldeburgh controversy over Maggi Hambling's beach sculpture, Scallop, Harry took a some photographs of it and produced them as cards. He recalls that, as the debate about the sculpture raged in the town, people would buy the cards and confide to him in hushed tones that they actually liked it.

Four years on, Harry still sells his own postcards and cards of the scallop as well as the series of 16 photographs of it taken and published by Ria Tosh (from nearby Knodishall) in order to celebrate what she fondly calls 'the shell'.

You will find Avocet at the southernmost end of the High Street – the opposite end from the Aldeburgh Bookshop and the Aldeburgh Cinema. Look out for the Suffolk Cards spinner which usually stands outside!

Avocet 179 High Street Aldeburgh Suffolk IP15 5AN Telephone: 01728 452928 / 454007 Email:

Opening hours 10 - 1 weekdays all year 1.30 - 4.00 spring 1.30 - 5.00 summer and autumn Limited afternoons in winter 11 - 4.00 Sundays

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