Sari Syvaluoma

I think this textile designers work is truly beautiful and love how she only uses a maximum of 3-4 colours in her work. Her work definitely epitomises the phrase less is more.

Kate Goldsworthy

Inspiration

Michael Brennand-Wood

Private Paradise Exhibition

I popped into the Whitworth Gallery to see what they were exhibiting because I happened to be passing by that way and hoped they had something relevant to what I was doing in my project. The exhibition was called Private Paradise and consisted of scenic wallpaper. I'm currently creating designs for wallpaper in repeat and these were wallpapers used for the same function but completely different. They were large pieces of floral scenes that looked very exotic due to the content and colour of the wallpaper. Most of then were hand printed in the 19th Century using wood blocks which would have been extremely labourious but the end results are definetly worth it.

Two things came to my mind while I walked around the gallery, one was that the name of the exhibition was fitting. The Islamic paradise (or heaven) is basically a garden and these wallpapers would have made you feel like you were sitting in a garden. And secondly when I was a child we had a large chenile wallhanging in the lounge. It had two massive peacocks and the colours were glorious but my father took it down and gave it away because we weren't allowed to have anything with images of people or animals in the house. After seeing all those large wall hangings in the exhibition I just wished we had kept ours.

The Great Indian Tiger Hunt
first manufactured by Velay, Paris before 1818

Oriental Garden
Design attributed to H. Watkins Wild
manufactured c.1919

Decor Chinois
Designed by Eugene Ehrmann & Georges Zipelius
1833-34

Inspiration

Henna designs