From floor to ceiling hang rolls of pattern and colour, all around the walls are unique designs worked by some of the UK’s leading wallpaper makers. Far from your everyday B&Q roll, these wallpapers are created by craft makers and treated as less of an accessory for the home and more as a canvas on which to brood, invent and lay ideas.
There is no question about it, digital technology has allowed for greater scope for the design and manufacture of wallpaper, however while some of the designers in this show have embraced modern technology many of them have not and instead have chosen to pursue wallpaper making as a traditional craft. It is fascinating to see makers like Claire Florey-Hitchcox choosing to adopt the old, labour intensive process of woodblock printing over more efficient modern means. Neither slick nor of a consistent nature, Florey-Hitchcox’s wallpaper reveals the organic beauty of an old-fashioned craft whose imperfections contribute to its aesthetic quality. While the results of digital technology should not be dismissed, it would seem neither should processes that rely on the skill of hand and eye.
One of the most original wallpapers in the show embracing digital technology came from design studio ‘Custhom’. Using simple blue on white, this wallpaper’s individuality comes from its textured surface of repeating cross-stitch mechanically punctured to make an intricate repeated Celtic knot. Just as the subtle quality of Florey-Hitchcox’s woodblock-printed wallpaper depended on the process used to create it, so did Custhom’s digitally cross-stitched design.
There is no right or wrong way to design or right or wrong process to use…the old and the new share a healthy rapport in the contemporary world of wallpaper (and art and design), or at least this exhibition would suggest they do. Timorous Beasties, respected for their wild innovation, may use digital printing but their designs are inspired by past tradition and imagery that they distort and reinterpret, merging heritage with contemporary design. Their displayed wallpaper was beautifully composed – an effortless complexity of birds, branches and nuts that could only have been achieved with the aid of digital technology. Yet despite the splendour of their wallpaper the intensity of the design raises questions as to its compatibility with the home. Your favoured wallpaper may not be the choice for your home interior, making you wonder if we need to be more daring in our statements of taste, or if the wallpapers on display are simply too wild to be tamed for a domestic setting.
Maybe it’s the contemporary designer’s job to be a little less comfortable and a little more forward thinking than the design we’re used to. The wallpapers in this exhibition may not be the conventional choice or the most affordable means of decoration, but they demonstrate the exciting potential of different processes, old and new, combined with fresh ideas and the importance of a designer’s personal vision, which in the end should tell you something about your own personal taste.
Rebecca Barwell is an artist and writer based in Lancashire.
Image courtesy Ruthin Craft Centre.
W is for Wallpaper, Ruthin Craft Centre, North Wales.
26 September – 22 November 2015
Published 29.10.2015 by James Schofield in Reviews
534 words