This weekend we took a trip out of town to visit Pallant House in Chichester. Extended to show the modern and contemporary art collection of architect Colin St John Wilson which includes work by John Piper, Patrick Caulfield, Sir Peter Blake, Howard Hodgkin and Lucian Freud, I was there specifically to see the Henry Moore textiles exhibition.

Moore often collaborated with David Whitehead – a leading fabric printer and also with Zika Ascher – one of my true inspirations. Many years ago I spent a few weeks working at the Ascher studio surrounded by old screens whose colours told the company’s rich creative history.

Fame in Fabric, Pathe film of Ascher studio

In the mid-1940s Ascher was known for collaborating with a range of artists including Matisse, Cocteau, Derain, Piper and Cecil Beaton. He forged a long-term relationship with Moore and the current exhibition at Pallant House tells their story brilliant. Moore’s constant sketching using so many media and materials and the textiles produced with Ascher were an exercise in trying to get onto cloth was what usually done on paper.

Moore’s textiles featuring his drawings of reclining ladies, birds and his barbed wire motifs were produced using complex techniques such as discharge printing. Their joy comes from a direct sense of Moore’s mark-making and of the artist himself.

Nowadays this is often lost in fabric design, financial considerations tend to limit the ability to experiment with tricky, time-consuming processes, instead speed, volume and cost-effectiveness are the order of the day. This means that mainstream design and production that rely heavily on computers, which definitely has its own merits, but there is perhaps a kind of flatness or lack of character in the final product. I love seeing brushstrokes or the differing weights in a hand-drawn line. It’s something I try from time to time in my own pieces.

Flora detail

Like Moore and Ascher, what works best for me is mixing different aspects – a painterly feel, handmade or retro qualities – with contemporary colours and methods in order to try and create something entirely new.

Posted in botanical, colour, design, interior design, pattern, review, textiles

Getting out and about to absorb as much of the arts and culture available on my doorstep no doubt has a direct influence on my work but I also find a wealth of inspiration from online sources.

Now that all of Pathé’s newsreels are available online I’ve been checking a few out. They have an enormous archive covering news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970. The programmes about interior design and domestic life in general are especially fascinating. There are some great ones from the 1950s and 60s from which you can get a genuine insight into the materials, patterns, colours, furniture and other objects of that time.

Country Cottage – not sure if I like the final outcome of this but it’s fascinating to watch her striping the wallpaper in her finery , reminded me of seeing Gilbert and George recently blow torching the paint off a their front door in Spitafields all dressed up in their wonderful suits.

The Dome House – a great space to work in I wouldn’t mind one of these, I love how the windows open.

1953 Fashion Show – I love the stripey yachting outfit , how very NOW !

Carpets – Wilton and Axminster with some great shots of rural Britain and of hand knotting.

Another that I often delve into is VADS, the online resource for visual arts. It is managed by the Farnham Campus of the University College for the Creative Arts and is an extensive collection of images including fine art, illustration, advertising posters and textiles as well as including the Design Council’s slide collection and the London College of Fashion’s archive. Worth a look!

Posted in architecture, design, fashion, interior design, textiles, vintage

For a while, I’ve been pondering the renewal in interest of hand-made, artisan goods. It’s a trend that has filtered down into everyday life, including food. But reading recently that Hermés is continuing to thrive during these economically challenging times, and Goyard just opening a store in London, again made me wonder about issues of craft, quality and desirability at the top end of the market.

In the mind of the consumer, genuinely luxurious goods are increasingly perceived as such through the knowledge they have been carefully hand-crafted, with a great deal of time and dedication by only a small number of individuals and in limited quantities. With this process comes an inherent one-offness, a quirk, difference or personalisation that the next piece from the same workshop won’t have. And it’s this resulting combination of uniqueness and subtlety is what distinguishes them as ‘luxe’.

The hospitality business and network Rough Luxe sums up the current mood and goes a step further; “Rough Luxe… is a new way of looking at luxury as part of time and not just as an object of consumption. Luxury should be an enriching personal experience and not simply the ownership or utilisation of an expensive object.”

THE ROUGH LUXE HOTEL LONDON

In my own industry there are a number of companies that are offering hand-painted papers and interior products. Others are re-creating the hand-made feel using machine and digital prints. It’s great that new technologies mean that quality and beauty are more widely available but there is an enduring respect and desire for craft.

Posted in craft, design, handmade, interior design, trends, vintage, wallpaper

It’s not just part of my job, I’m fascinated by colours and what they might mean so I was especially intrigued by a story in this morning’s Times reporting some research conducted by Sandtex, the paint manufacturers. According to the survey ‘people with blue houses are more successful than those living in homes of any other colour’. In this case, ‘successful’ is denoted by salary, job title at work, number of holidays taken and help employed around the home. If you live in a green house, you’re the bottom of the pile. One of my favourite colours is pink which, apparently, puts me in the second to lowest position. Oh dear!

Here’s the article.

Posted in architecture, colour, interior design, trends

We’ve just been at 100% Design then Decorex where I was chatting to Christopher Cole, son of the founder of Cole & Son and he too spoke of how, in the 1950s, very personal relationships with artists such as Lucienne Day and Eduardo Paolozzi were integral to the company’s identity. It’s the fruits of these collaborations that have endured, even though Cole & Son is no longer a small business. Similarly, the Palladio collections from Lightbown Aspinall and then Sanderson were so admired because of the involvement with artists and sense of craft.

Palladio Seven, Harlow. Designer Helen Dalby. Source Design Council Slide Collection, VADS

Palladio Seven, Sphere. Designer Deryck Healey & Rosemary Newson. Source Design Council Slide Collection, VADS

When your company is small, these relationships tend to be about celebrating the artists, their talent and the products that you make together.

Posted in design, interior design, pattern, wallpaper

I feel that when larger companies link up with artists and designers it becomes more about PR opportunities and boosting sales. Whether Debenhams or Topshop, Habitat or John Lewis, they’re all doing it. A few years ago when Graham & Brown undertook a project in conjunction with the Royal College of Art the results were really interesting and, I think, improved Graham and Brown’s status but I can’t help wondering whether it became yet another case of a marketing team jumping at the chance to use the word ‘designer’ and up the perception of creativity.

Of course, ‘designer’ ranges and products are so popular that they aren’t going to go away. But, there is a danger that we may suffer a designer overdose, especially in the case of particular names.

It seems that the same handful of designers, people like Marcel Wanders, Patricia Urquoia and Hella Jongerius are producing a wide range of products for the same four or five companies. It’s completely understandable for manufacturers to stick to these names as they’re a safe bet and will sell well but there is a downside – the resulting feeling of familiarity and homogeneity. The upside is that it becomes even easier for individuals and smaller companies to really stand out.

Posted in design, fashion, interior design, product design, trends

Companies like Cole & Son and Sanderson started life as family businesses, grew bigger and eventually were bought – a commonly recurring pattern of development. Often in the UK we complain that our manufacturing traditions are dying out and that we don’t nurture and retain our own talent. But I think in this country we are good at forming small, often family-run, innovative little companies, which do survive and make stuff in this country and we should congratulate ourselves on this more. And it’s these sorts of companies that are gaining more and more respect as the trend to question the big international chains and their mass-produced goods continues.

Channels, the furniture company and CTO Lighting have shown at 100% about as long as we have and they still continue to manufacture mostly in the UK, as do Timorous Beasties who showed at Designersblock. Naturally we’ve all felt economic ups and downs and that’s what is nice about being at a trade fair, the chance to catch up and find we’ve had similar experiences.

Looking around 100% and the London Design Festival it feels like there are lots of fantastic, small, family-based enterprises. In our corner of East London are Jason Bruges Studio and Forster Inc, a brother-and-sister companies, Foxall Associates, founded by two brothers and JAM, set up by Jamie Anley and his partner Astrid Zala – all of whom cover a range of creative disciplines and are becoming highly respected. Keeping it small and starting with family can really work.

Posted in design, interior design, wallpaper