Eh up! York artist Emily Hayes launches her range of gifts and cards for Christmas

She decided to create her own Yorkshire-inspired products, under the name EH! Contemporary Gifts, after the success of her first retro cycling-fact card for Le Grand Depart from Yorkshire for the 2014 Tour de France and subsequent postcards for the 2015 Tour de Yorkshire.

Emily, the 29-year-old eldest daughter of Bishopthorpe Road traders' lynchpin, shopkeeper and city councillor Johnny Hayes, has lived a peripatetic artistic life, taking her to London, Berlin and Leipzig, but she has settled anew in Heworth since May.

She has a studio space in the Arts Barge's premises in Stonebow House on an old office floor shared with assorted artists and graphic designers, part of a thriving hub of York creativity in the heart of the city centre.

Emily Hayes's Christmas card, 12 Days Of Jumpers

"Yorkshire has influenced my work, such as the You Are The Pork In My Pie card, and enabled me to grow my business as a full-time artist," says Emily, whose designs have  been on show at the Berlin Summer Design Market in July, the Leeds Corn Exchange and the Pulse trade show at Olympia in London, where she launched EH! in May.

"EH! products are now stocked in fantastic stockists in London, including Somerset House and pop-up shops, as well as in Berlin, Leipzig, Edinburgh, throughout the rest of the UK and of course Yorkshire, and I'm part of the Designers/Makers Agency too," she says

Here in York, you will find Emily's cards and Deja Brew and A Yawn Is A Silent Scream For A Coffee tea towels in Frankie & Johnny's Cookshop in Bishopthorpe Road, while the new Lotte Inch Gallery, in Bootham, also sells her wares. Look out too for Emily's stall at the Shambles Market.

"I've done lots of products for Christmas, such as the playful 12 Days Of Jumpers greetings card, based on a collection of novelty Christmas jumpers, some inspired by actual jumpers, some from my imagination," says Emily. "There are also my 'aMazing' A6 greetings cards inspired by English mazes and Egyptian labyrinths, which are both cards and puzzles."

Emily graduated with a First from the BA graphic art course at Liverpool School of Art, with a middle year at Berlin's Universitat der Kunste, going on to study "quite a bizarre MA course" in design interactions at the Royal College of Art in London, after a year of teaching art and printmaking to GCSE and A-Level at Winchester College.

"The MA involved working with scientists, researching new ways to communicate with the public in a liaison between art and science, and looking at how developments in technology will have an impact on our future," she says.

"The communication side of the relationship would be the art side, posing questions that scientists might not think about in terms of the philosophical side of their work. I guess in some ways it was a course in science fiction!

"I was drawn to the course because I'm a bit of a geek at heart and I like a challenge as it was not just a straight illustration course. I liked the conceptual side of it, though I actually did the course by accident when I thought it might interest a friend, but it sounded so interesting I decided I'd do it myself!"

Emily returned to Berlin to draw illustrations for a German online music magazine, iCrates, and spread her artistic wings by doing picture framing for Berlin's National Gallery and the Berlinische Galerie, as well as freelance work in designing concepts for advertisements.

"That's something that would be amazing to do over too," she says. "I've worked as a graphic designer in Berlin for two years but I always end up having an on-off relationship with Berlin, as I like to come back for the Yorkshire banter and because it's such a beautiful and friendly city with a great sense of humour. I still do trips to Berlin and have work there, but I think York and the north is the place I always want to return to."

The fact-loving geek in Emily meets the playful humorist in her cards, not least her first Tour de France card, whose facts included the amount of sweat a cyclist perspired over the duration of the tour, the calories a cyclist needs for one day of cycling, represented in cheeseburgers, and the story of the amazing cheat who even took the train on part of the cycle tour.

"I was completely amazed by my sales over the Tour de France period; I sold thousands of cards, and from this amazing, unexpected start I gained the confidence and financial backing, giving me the drive to pursue my dream to create my own line of design-led gifts," she says.

Emily Hayes's "Yawn" tea towel

Emily already had designed the shop sign at York Station for Cycle Heaven At The Station, a 30 metre-long depiction of Yorkshire life, cycling, the history of York and the station, and created the Bishy Road logo and Bishy Road leaflets and merchandise, not least her J’adore Bishy Rue range for the Tour de France.

Now, The EH! Contemporary Gifts range of Yorkshire-made prints, greetings cards, notebooks, tea towels, cosmetics bags and cushions, is marked by striking block colours and humour, even in her trading name.

"It's EH!, as in the mischievous Yorkshire expression 'Eh up!', as well as my initials," she says. "I would say playfulness is really central to my work. The aesthetics are important but it's also important to add something, to give it a cheeky flavour or give you something to think about."

What playfulness from Emily awaits in 2016? "I'm working on a new collection at the moment for my EH! range, and I'm looking to build up more stockists in Britain and abroad, where I've already started selling in Berlin and Leipzig," she says.

All this is a case of EH! up and up for Yorkshire artist Emily Hayes.

Emily Hayes's work is available to view and buy online at shop-eh.com