Our Story

Cornflower is a leader in creating bespoke product ranges for museums, galleries and visitor attractions across the UK and beyond.  With over 26 years of experience, we know what sells, and work with you to create best-selling ranges at competitive prices. 

We are proud of how Cornflower has grown whilst maintaining its quality and attention to detail.  At the heart of what we do is the core principle that bespoke retail product development is the lifeblood of museum retail. The exclusive nature of products that can only be found in one place, which are designed with the museum’s collection/mission in mind, which help to act as ambassadors for that museum – these are all vitally important points, which mark museum retail itself as unique.

With digital print technologies, bespoke rather than off-the shelf products can and should be the norm for museum shops. Visitors want to buy something that reflects and resonates with the collection that they have seen. Through that purchase, those visitors then become ambassadors as they take those products home, or share them as gifts.

The impact of bespoke retail products therefore transcends that original sale, they market a museum, they evangelise the organisation’s work and ethos, and they delight.

This is something that we are really good at in the UK – we are proud to say therefore that specialist suppliers like Cornflower are world-leaders at this.

Although we say that Cornflower started in 1999, the company actually started life in 1996 as McQueen Fine Art, a publisher of fine art prints from archives.

In 1999, in renaming the business from that original name of McQueen Fine Art, we took inspiration from one of our customers, Kew Gardens (who remain a loyal customer to this day) and wanted to find a name that reflected the natural world, and the importance of the environment and conservation.

The cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) used to be a regular sight in agricultural fields, but with the increasing use of herbicides has become endangered in its natural habitat.  The story of the flower's protection and reintroduction is an important barometer of success in protecting and rewilding the environment. In 2002, we helped sponsor a wheatfield that was planted at Kew Gardens to highlight the cornflower in its natural environment.  Towards the end of that exhibit though, pranksters couldn’t resist sneaking into the gardens at night and of course produced a perfect flower-shaped crop circle in the wheat! 

Today, the flower continues to embody our belief in protecting the environment, and our impact on it, reflected further nowadays in our environmental accreditations.

Plus, back in 1999, the domain name of cornflower.co.uk was freely available (amazing to consider now) so the name of the company was decided on and Cornflower was born.

The cornflower is also one of the favourite flowers of His Majesty King Charles III, and often to be seen in his lapel – so with our love of this little flower, we are in good company!