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Brand name and meaning
The company name Mineheart is derived from a quotation in William Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 46’. The quote itself, “mine eye and heart are at mortal war”, is interpreted by the Mineheart founders as signifying their passion for tradition with an eye for contemporary design. Founders Brendan Young and Vanessa Battaglia felt the meaning of the phrase and the way it translates into art, and especially modern art, encapsulates the overall ethos they took in their lives matching their intentions for the brand they wanted to create.

Mineheart interior design
As an artistic team using brand name Young and Battaglia, the founders produce a proportion of the art they sell themselves. Alongside the Young and Battaglia brand, the website www.minehart.com also represents the individual styles of a number of international artists under the brand name Mineheart. The unconventional modern styles in the art produced by Young and Battaglia has obviously had an impact on the artists they work with. With a presence in the international art world in their art right, many artists with similar eccentric styles have been attracted to Mineheart for representation and collaboration.

One look over the Mineheart website you will see something unexpected; illusion wallpaper, contemporary masterpieces mashed-up into modern surrealism, uplifting quotations fused with renaissance art, unusual lighting designs and furniture and as things become more eccentric a range of wall art depicting animals dressed in 18th century clothing. Elaborate and intricate designs are infused with a practical need for home furnishings with Mineheart’s wallpaper collection and U.K. based wallpapering service.

You can find similarly unusual designs in the catalogues of each of the Mineheart artists - on the Mineheart website, the artists they represent are listed as: Young & Battaglia, Emanuele Pangrazi, Mineheart, Studio Bleoh, Himitsuhana, Angela Rossi, Orbeh Studio, Vincenzo Sgaramella, Courtney Brims, Michael Banks.

There is an underlying surrealist tone to most of the unique artworks available to buy on Mineheart.com. Locatable under sub headings Abstract, Animals, Figurative, Landscapes, Photographic, Portraits, Proverbs, Punked Classics, Renaissance, Still Life, Surreal - you will find abstract imagery in the vast majority of the art on sale.

History and Ownership
The partnership between the two founders Brendan Young and Vanessa Battaglia started in 2000 when they met in the UK while studying at Exeter University. The pair became desk neighbours when a 3-month-long exchange programme brought Vanessa Battaglia from Italy to the U.K. After they graduated the pair went travelling round Europe together. Their vision to own and run a company together formed in 2003. An artistic couple with a passion for product design; these were the early beginnings of Mineheart. Both went along separate paths in individual careers that included working for companies like Next Homes and John Lewis. Mineheart was set up by Vanessa Battaglia and Brendan Young in 2010. By that time the pair were husband and wife and had settled in the village of St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, U.K.

In 2012, John Mabhedege joined the team as Mineheart’s Commercial Director. At the time Mineheart were very design focused, creating bespoke wallpaper designs and trading mostly amongst friends. Mineheart was operating from an office at Brendan’s Mum’s house in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, U.K. John Mabhegede was a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge and running a business development company. When John came on board, the team began focussing the efforts of Mineheart into a more functioning business structure. Growing successes of Mineheart meant the business quickly outgrew the office they were in. In 2017, Mineheart moved to their current premises, a 6000-square-foot warehouse in Sawtry, Cambridgeshire, U.K, in 2017.

The three, Vanessa Battaglia, Brendan Young and John Mabhedege have remained the core team behind Mineheart and their designs have appeared as sets in photo shoots, online articles and on sale in many online stores, including www.mineheart.com. As Mineheart developed during the 2010s - in a 2016 interview, Young and Battaglia stated that, “Last year we gave ourselves ‘proper’ titles.” Brendan Young acts as Design Director with Vanessa Battaglia as Art Director.

Products Categorised and listed on the Mineheart website, the product range for Mineheart covers the fundamental elements of interior design. From the Mineheart homepage, under titles of Art, Wallpaper, Lighting, Home Accessories, Gifts, New Arrivals and Clearance; customers are given options to find the specific piece of home furnishing they are looking for. Mineheart also sell gifts such as Bags, Candles and Scarves with a new arrivals section when one of the Mineheart artists creates something new. In the case of some of the more high-profile paintings or artworks represented by Mineheart, you can find those more well-known designs available as a wallpaper mural such as ‘The white sky XIX Wallpaper Mural’, a Stefano Bonazzi painting. Mineheart offer a bespoke interior design service, applying any given design as chosen by the customer incorporated into a unique wallpaper installation in their home. Mineheart wallpapers are printed using minimal low VOC inks (A+ French air quality standards).

Awards and recognition Heralded as one of the top 10 design studios of the future at 100% Design London’s 10th anniversary, and their work has been published in books, leading design magazines, and selected for prestigious shows and collections including the V&A museum and the MOMA.

Locations

 * Nowadays, the Mineheart headquarters is an art gallery in Sawtry, a small town in the countryside on the outskirts of Cambridgeshire, U.K.
 * When Mineheart began in 2010, it was run in ‘Bream Cottage’, the home of the two founders Brendan Young and Vanessa Battaglia. ‘Bream Cottage’ was the house shared by the pair, a workers cottage in village of St Neots, Cambridgeshire, U.K.