Hemingway Design

When an email appeared in my inbox last week. celebrating Wayne and Geradine 'Red or Dead' Hemingway's 10-year tenure as designers for Surface View (purveyors, in simple but not exhaustive terms, of giant prints), I wasn't immediately enthusiastic.

The Hemingways have great taste (if you have a copy of Holly Becker's latest book, Decorate Workshop, the couple's beautiful home is featured inside – they have amazing sofas made from the old family boat). But for me, their style – from what I'd seen in their online shop – is a little too kitsch. So I wasn't expecting to like what I saw when I had a nosey at their Surface View Collection. But this print really does it for me – what a beautiful colour combination...

The blue paint (particularly the way it isn't broken up with unecessarily differently painted skirting boards) behind, of course, gives it maximum punch. The paint, I should think, is either Rock A Billy Blue or Blue Monday, two shades from the Hemingway range for Crown Paints, worth checking out if you want period-specific paints from the 1940s-1980s.

And the print isn't dissimilar to the bold Florence Broadhurst fabric I have stretched over a canvas frame in my sitting room (below). It was a gift from my Australian sister-in-law, as the company with the rights to Broadhurst's amazing archive of designs is based in Australia. I wrote about them in a previous post, in case you want to browse the wonderful Signature Prints online shop.

So then I had a look at the Hemingways' own online shop...

...which has some lovely, non-kitsch things including their designs for G-Plan (above left), some good architecture (and other) illustrations and photography (above right) via their Land of Lost Continents arm, as well as a whole new range (below) which you can also catch in person if you are at a loose end in London today, as the couple are exhibiting at the last day of the Home show at Earl's Court.

The Hemingway Collection is also available direct from Graham & Brown wallpapers.