Object of the day: New Eley Kishimoto wallpapers

Weeeeeell, if I can't write about eye-popping budget-stretching wallpaper during the London Design Festival, when else? (The event started this weekend and goes on until next Sunday.)

I'm a big fan of Eley Kishimoto clothes, and the print mad design duo's expanding homewares range excites me greatly. And it's not for the faint-hearted...

This is my favourite of the wallpaper designs that the brand – aka Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto – is launching at Decorex, which kicks off as LDF ends on Sunday.

Would you put it in your house?

It would really lift a room, for sure. I'm seeing it as the backdrop to a wall of white shelves, holding a disciplined display.

It also would look fantastic as the best feature wall/corner you'd ever seen, in an otherwise black-painted room, too (feature walls are back apparently, but I always favour a wall and a turn to mix things up a little).

The wallpaper range builds on these, which I wrote about when they exhibited them a few years back in an exhibition of them at the capital's Aram Store. Here's one of the other new designs.

Left: Mark Eley and Wakako Kishimoto

A very Eley Kishimoto take on a classic design. Again, with a crisp white theme around it, this would energise a room no end. I'd love to see it in a wide entrance hallway, with white-painted floorboards. The papers are going to be priced at £160 per roll.

But if you can't afford them, or don't have an interior that could accommodate such boldness, you can enjoy them – along with designs by many other interesting names – in an exhibition that runs until the end of October.

Above: Tracy Kendall and Louise Body, two of the designers whose work will appear at the London Print Studio exhibition

Designers on show at Artists' Interior Worlds include Lizzie Allen, whose Festival of Britain print you may remember from a few years back, when she was commissioned to create it in celebration of the Royal Festival Hall's 60th birthday (and you can still buy prints taken from it at the Southbank shop). There will also be work by Timorous Beasties, whose deviant urban Toile designs must surely be Britain's most popular gastropub loo wall covering. Also on show is Deborah Bowness, she of the fake wall of library books and CUSTHOM, digital embroidery meisters who I featured here. The Chapman brothers have created a design called ‘Insult to Injury’, which apparently "reworks Goya’s ‘Los Caprichos’ etchings to outrageous effect". Of course. All these, among a vast rollcall of more interesting names.

The exhibition, which aims to pit classical artists against contemporary designers, sounds totally brilliant. It runs until 1 November at Londonprintstudio.org.uk.

Introducing... Anna Chilton

First, the bad news: you can't buy Anna Chilton's beautiful drawings – on various ceramic items – and her striking print designs – on wallpapers, t-shirts and more – today.

The good news: you're getting the inside tip-off about this fresh talent early – and one day soon, when she's left art school – I know! – if not before, her stunning work will be in demand from retailers a-plenty. (Sharpen those elbows, buyers.)

I caught up with Anna, who is south London based and studying Surface Design at UAL’s London College of Communications, to find out a bit about her and about the inspiration for her work... as well as when we'll be able to get hold of some of her beautiful designs, especially these simply drawn, characterful animal portraits.

Let's start with the most important question: any chance we'll all be able to buy your designs some time soon?
Yes, I finish my degree in June and then the plan is to develop the ceramics collections and make steps to get them manufactured. I am looking to find a buyer for my ceramics so I can start getting them out there.

And meanwhile...?
I imagine I will work towards a market stall and online shop in time for Christmas so check the blog! [Link below.]

What inspires your gorgeous animal illustrations – the drawings are so full of character...
I first started drawing animals when I designed a range of cake tins. The designs were drawings of anthropomorphic Indian animals mixed with package design of the colonial era. It sounds weird when I say it like that so I better explain!

It started off as an interest in the beauty of the British/Indian colonial aesthetic and became more satirical as I learned more about the brutality of British Empire. I drew Queen Victoria as an elephant and a plantation owner with the head of a rhino [above]. I was surprised at how much character came though in the animal’s faces.

The Tiger mug [top three images] is from a set of three called Big Lazy Animal where all the animals used, instead of being scary, are all sleepy and a bit ridiculous.

Where did the inspiration for the pattern in your wallpaper come from (I wondered if it was a graphic reinvention of this photo)?
It was from my last show called Diamonds and Cloth. I do a lot of hand drawing and the wallpaper came from some drawings I did of crumpled cloth. It’s interesting how everyone sees something different in this particular piece.

How did both collections come about? 
The white ceramic animals were a college project and the tiger mug was something I did for a Christmas stall. The wallpaper was for a competition. I am always busy on something and have sketchbooks full of ideas. I never have time to do all of them!

Where and when will we see more Anna Chilton work? 
I am working towards my final show at the moment, which involves some wall hangings. I’m hoping to bring a modern twist to this rather old-fashioned product. I’m still developing the pieces but you can expect plenty of illustrative work and a lot of narrative. This will be at London College of Communications in Elephant and Castle, London, on 19 June.

I am also hoping to show at this years’ New Designers at London’s Business design Centre on 25-28 June, so look out for the London Collage of Communications stand.

Then I’ll be living between London and the south of France where I have some cheap studio space lined up to give me the space I need to try and get some products out into the world.

Annachilton.tumblr.com

Introducing... The Common Room

When former performance artist, Kate Hawkins, retired from her chosen medium, she followed a new vision: to make good, contemporary art accessible to "the many, rather than the few". 

Her solution? To commission working artists to design conceptual wallpapers, and sell them in her new shop, The Common Room. I think the brand new company's first designs are very exciting. What do you reckon?

'282 Ways of Making a Salad', above, by Fine Art/Philosophy graduate James Ferris, takes its title from a 1950s book of celebrity salad recipes (it exists, I checked on Amazon).

Wallpaper has generally been thought of as background rather than foreground," Kate and co explain. "but our wallpapers are designed to challenge and excite. Just like every great artwork."

The concept not a million miles away from Fenton Art and Design, who I wrote about last year – ethos-wise, at least, as both business models are focused on supporting either emerging or established artistic talent.

'Back to Front', above, by Goshka Macuga, is based on a scan of the threads from the back of one of the large scale tapestries she makes; "the hidden workings, the threads and knots" showing "how an artwork is all tied together".

The papers are for sale at £85 per roll, with samples at £1.50 each. See other artists' designs including Kate's own at Commonroom.co

Post by Kate

Object of the day: Sanderson 'Manila'

It's holiday time of year for the organised among us. 

If that's not you (it's not me), or if your holiday is about open fires and British countryside, you could always bring the heat home instead. And these two prints, in Sanderson's new Manila range, would do it for me.

A good tip if you don't want to commit to wallpapering properly, or can only stretch to one roll of the stuff, is to paper a board instead – as above. Use MDF if your panel won't be as big as this one (the stuff weighs a tonne) or even plywood if sturdy isn't a requirement, and you fancy making it portable.

You could also buy a roll with a buddy and split it to make a bed headboard or fill picture frames, top an old table (smother it with PVA glue or non-yellowing varnish), renew a paper drum lampshade (get a hot glue gun – amazing things), spruce your stair risers (wallpaper paste and matt varnish)... Any other ideas?

The fabric could be fashioned in a similar way but using an artist's canvas stretcher.

The Manila wallpaper is £52 RRP per roll and the fabric is £49 per metre. Find it at Sanderson-uk.com

Object of the day: CUSTHOM's latest embroidered fabric

I've written about Custhom before: the young design company's particular speciality is their unusual and striking digital embroidery technique, which gives their textiles a tactile, 3-D quality.

Now they've just launched a new range of cotton wallpaper and fabric using the same methods.

The south London-based pair behind Custhom Nathan Philpott and Jemma Ooi only met – at the Royal College of Art – in 2009 but have already created designs for Anthropologie, Liberty and John Lewis among others.

This latest collection from them has been inspired by ancient Mexican Otomi embroidery: graphic and organic shapes combined to depict man living in harmony with the natural environment. The style is said to date back to prehistoric cave paintings in Tenango.

But Custhom have given it a contemporary twist, not least with their innovative use of digital embroidery which gives the patterns a sharp precision. Each piece design has been created with skilled British craftsmen who embroider onto non-woven paper or cotton fabric.

The textiles come in navy on an off-white background, or in off-black. The fabric is £126 a metre and the wallpaper comes in 55cm wide rolls and costs £84 per metre. Not cheap, but the work involved makes these pieces works of art. And a little, I think, could go a long way with a bit of creative use.

Do check out some of the other striking designs from Custhom: I would particularly recommend their distinctive Offset cushions, and the elegant Palladian collection, which features ceramics and textiles. I have particularly fallen for the Palladian Loop wallpaper. For a budget buy, they also sell some of the designs in tea-towel form, for £12.

Check it all out at Custhom.co.uk

Post by Kate. Images from Custhom

Freestyle Wednesday: mix colours like a pro

When I visited Home 2014 a couple of weeks ago, I finally met Tania James, one half of colourful design duo, Quirk and Rescue. 

It reminded me that I've long meant to post a photo of Q&R's rather amazing geometric Wundt wallpaper.

For starters, I like the paper itself (more details of which below). But also, I love how their photograph of it in situ is styled. It throws out all preconceptions about how to use colour. What do you think?

There are so many colours going on, and some are lone sharks – basking in their brightness, not a thought of finding a partner: the pink, the green, the yellow and the grey... Why does it work? I'd sometimes like to be bolder with my colour choices, so I thought I'd break it down to see what I could learn.

For starters, if you've met Tania, or at least seen her spectacular hair, you'll know she's not a woman scared by colour. So confidence is a start. But besides that, I think its secret is partly that it is clean. It is not only well-ordered and neatly arranged so as to avoid a clutter of objects to jar with the collection of colours, but also the arrangement of the colours themselves is clean. Orange and blue, of course, dominate – and in a large scale pattern, too, which means it doesn't look bitty and messy. These colours are also echoed tidily in the filing cabinet labels and electric cable; all this combined makes them your solid anchor. Red pops up in three places, in the lamp, dish and a book: a trio is always a tidy design trick. The white of the floor is picked up in a book and the lightbulb: ditto. This solid base allows for a couple of wild cards, even clashes – in the books, the pink ampersand, the grey cabinet and the wooden table. Very clever.

If you like the wallpaper, it costs £90 a roll and comes in some other lovely colour combinations (the grey/green is my favourite). Find it and other good stuff – including the excellent, new font tea-towels – at Quirkandrescue.com

And here are some older posts about colour.

Post by Kate, image Quirk & Rescue