Harland Miller Kiss Tote Bag
Last updated: 19 September 2026
The Harland Miller tote bag is the Kiss design, made with Loqi for the Design Museum’s Harland Miller display. It still costs £17.50. His paintings hang at gallery scale, so this is the cheapest way into his work by a long way. It is polyester rather than canvas. It folds into a zip pouch the size of a passport, and the museum sells it nowhere but its own shop. Price and stock checked at the Design Museum Shop on 5 September 2026.
What £17.50 buys
A printed polyester tote carrying one of Miller’s letter works in his own palette. It folds down into a small zip pouch. That is the Loqi format, and the reason these live in a coat pocket rather than a cupboard.
Seventeen were in stock when I checked on 5 September 2026. The display it was made for closed in January. So this is what is left of the run, not a line the shop keeps topping up.
| Detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Price | £17.50 |
| Material | Polyester |
| Packs down | Into a pocket-sized zip pouch |
| Made with | Loqi |
| Sold by | Design Museum Shop, and nowhere else |
| Stock | In stock, 17 on 5 September 2026 |
| Delivery | Free UK standard over £60, or free click and collect |
Who Harland Miller is
Miller was born in Yorkshire in 1964 and took his MA at Chelsea School of Art in 1988. He is best known for large canvases painted as Penguin book covers that never existed. The titles are invented: Whitby, The Self Catering Years, Rags to Polyester, My Story, York, So Good They Named It Once.
He writes as well as paints. His first novel, Slow Down Arthur, Stick to Thirty, came out in 2000. A later novella worked through obsessive-compulsive disorder in Polaroids. The words in the paintings are not a graphic device bolted on afterwards.
Where the Kiss design comes from
The Harland Miller display at the Design Museum ran from 10 December 2025 to 25 January 2026, free. Monumental paintings filled the Helene and Johannes Huth Gallery on Level 2. Works on paper from the same series hung on the Garfield Weston Mezzanine.
The works came from his Letter Paintings, which he began after a spell in Los Angeles. The museum describes them as reflecting on medieval manuscript illumination, where a decorative capital opened a chapter. Then it puts that through a Pop Art sensibility. Blown up to canvas size, a single letter stops being a letter and becomes a shape.
That is what is on the bag. At tote scale the effect runs the other way round, because the shape shrinks back towards being type again.
Why it is the cheapest Harland Miller there is
The same range runs to £80 for a limited edition exhibition poster, £120 for the 60 by 80cm posters and £150 for a Boss bomber jacket. Below the tote sit only a £6 mug and a £12 tea towel. Neither carries a full work.
So £17.50 is where the price stops tracking the artist and starts tracking the object. Museum shops do this routinely, and it is the reason to look at them first.
The honest catch. It is polyester, not canvas, and a print rather than a work. Anybody hoping to own a Harland Miller gets a very good bag instead. A Loqi folds small and carries light. It is a spare bag in a pocket, not a weekly shop. The display closed in January 2026, so when these seventeen go the shop is unlikely to reorder. The £22 ‘Oh No’ scarf from the same range has already gone. Its page here is now a record rather than a link to buy.
Buying it, and getting it
The Design Museum Shop sells it directly. UK standard shipping is free once an order passes £60. Click and collect at the museum costs nothing at any order size. Design Museum members get 10% off automatically at checkout when logged in, which takes the tote to £15.75.
FAQs
Is the Harland Miller tote bag an official product?
Yes. The Design Museum Shop had it made for its own Harland Miller display, in collaboration with Loqi. It sells only through that shop.
How big is it, and how much will it carry?
Loqi totes are a standard shopper shape, built light so they pack into their own pouch. They suit books, a laptop sleeve and a lunch. They do not suit a full supermarket trip.
Can I still get the Harland Miller scarf?
No. The ‘Oh No’ scarf sold out and its product page now returns a 404. The tote and the £12 Kiss tea towel are the closest things left from that range.
What is the cheapest Harland Miller in the shop?
The Boss mug at £6, then the Kiss tea towel at £12, then this tote at £17.50. Above that the prices jump to £80 for a limited edition poster.
Will it be restocked?
Treat it as finite. The display closed in January 2026 and museum shops rarely reorder once a run has ended.
More from CoolCuration
- The £25 and under gift guide: everything the site lists at this money.
- The Harland Miller ‘Oh No’ scarf: what happened to it, and what is left of that range.
- Anthony Burrill’s You and Me print: another artist who paints in words.
- The gift guide for artists: materials, books and editions.
- theprintspace discount code: for framing a print properly rather than pinning it up.
Small print
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