From Sketch to Print: How a Bottle Art Poster Is Born
Every poster in the Bottle Art collection starts the same way: with a conversation.
Not a brief document. Not a mood board. A conversation — between Mark Williamson and an artist he believes in — about wine, about joy, about art, & about what it might mean to bring the two together in a single image. What happens after that conversation is different every time. That is what makes the collection what it is.
The Commission
Each year, Willi's selects an artist for the annual commission. The selection is never arbitrary. Mark has spent decades building relationships with artists across the world — painters, illustrators, photographers, graphic artists — and the choice of who to invite reflects a genuine belief in what that particular artist can bring to the subject. But there is no absolute. Artists sometimes arrive by themselves, in a variety of ways : the latest artist in the bottle Art Collection, Dominique Fournier, for instance, came in for lunch, and left with an idea. A good one, too, as his 2025 Bottle Art poster will attest.
The brief, when it comes, is deliberately open. Wine. The vine. The joie de vivre. Interpret it as you see fit. There are no mandatory colours, no required compositions, no brand guidelines to follow. The artist is trusted to find their own way in.
This openness is not naivety — it is the whole point. A constrained brief produces predictable work. An open brief produces art.
The Creative Process
What follows varies enormously from artist to artist. Some arrive with a clear vision almost immediately; others spend weeks exploring before something clicks. Some work in sketchbooks; others go straight to canvas or screen. Some produce dozens of studies; others, like Dominique Fournier, arrive at the final image in a single sustained session.
What they share is a seriousness of intent. These are not illustrations produced to a deadline. They are works of art that happen to have wine as their subject — and the artists treat them accordingly.
The dialogue between artist and Willi's continues throughout. Mark sees the work as it develops, responds to it, occasionally asks questions. But he does not direct. The artist's vision is the one that matters, and the final image is always, unmistakably, theirs.
From Original to Print
Once the artwork is finalised, the production process begins — and this is where the commitment to quality becomes tangible.
The standard Bottle Art prints are produced to fine art specifications: rich colour reproduction, archival inks, papers chosen for their weight and texture. They are made to be framed and lived with, not to fade or yellow after a few years on a wall.
The signed Velin editions go further still. Velin paper — a smooth, heavyweight paper with a long history in fine art printmaking — gives the image a depth and presence that standard papers cannot match. Each Velin edition is then signed by the artist, transforming it from a high-quality print into something closer to an original work: unique, authenticated, and a collectible that feels genuinely rare. Because it is.
What You Receive
When a Bottle Art poster arrives at your door, it carries the full weight of this process with it. The conversation that started it. The weeks of creative work. The careful production. The decision, made at every stage, to do things properly rather than quickly.
That is what you are buying when you buy a Bottle Art print. Not just an image. The whole process that produced it.
See the full collection and find the poster that speaks to you: browse the whole Bottle Art Collection.