Design news from Paris: the British designers and fabric houses causing a stir at the international interiors shows
Set in showrooms and galleries lining quaint streets on either side of the Seine, the event is unstuffy and great fun, with plenty of cafés and bars. It runs until Monday with a late night on Saturday, the ticket prices aren’t hefty and it’s open to all.
“This is where the decorating year begins,” says Graham Noakes, sales and marketing director at Chelsea’s Osborne & Little.
Currently marking its 50th anniversary, the company brings a huge “soft sculpture” fabric birthday cake to Paris. You can see it now on Instagram @osborneandlittle.
Amid 100-plus international brands, the British shine through, with superbly trained designers well-equipped to hold off the largely continental competition, and with archives rich for plunder.
UK firms excel in printing wallpapers, using methods from traditional blocks, screens and rollers to state-of-the-art digital machines.
From craft mills in Scotland, Wales and Gloucestershire to the UK’s ever-expanding range of studios, managed with skill and imagination, interiors firms continually push boundaries with complex textured fabrics, layered prints, huge wallpaper panels, metallics, iridescence and glitter inks.
“We offer a blend of heritage, fashion, craft, art and technology,” says Claire Vallis, creative director of Style Library, the new “umbrella” for six top furnishing labels with 20 designers between them.
Style Library publishes William Morris, whose archive is revered worldwide, and Sanderson, whose 2018 “coastal” portfolio has hand-drawn sea birds and beach huts.
British studios produce depth, detail and authenticity. “We do all our artwork by hand,” says Peter Gomez, head of design at Zoffany.
That includes painting chrysanthemum heads from life; layering ink on linen and enlisting craftsmen to “marble” an 18th-century archive damask or gild real lotus leaves for a three-metre panel. The Muse is a stunning new Zoffany fabric collection that oozes inspiration.
New to Deco Off is Mylands of London, with high-quality paints expertly blended in earth pigments for four generations by a family in Lambeth.
The Colours of London collection has 120 shades with lovely names. Long Acre is a chic grey and Millbank is a sludgy green. A clutch of whites includes Temple Bar and Clerkenwell.
The top British brands are far from insular. The design studios draw inspiration from across the world and scour the globe for the best makers, from weavers of fine wool in Italy to exquisite embroiderers in India.
A new cut-and-loop pile épingle velvet by Mark Alexander is made possible by a mill in the Flemish countryside that uses rare looms with needle-fine wires.
“Craftsmanship and materials are at the very heart of what we do, in the choice of yarns and international producers,” says brand director Mark Butcher.
Carley Bean, new head of design at Cole & Son in north London, says: “London is a cosmopolitan, design-led city, and this global outlook is a driving force. We express a particular blend of heritage and modernity.”
Her brand looked to America and Martyn Lawrence Bullard, one of the US’s top 25 interior designers. He explored artisan techniques worldwide and took diverse motifs, from Hollywood palms to English botanicals and Moorish buildings.
Nuevo, a jaunty new edit by Scion, was prompted by a desert festival just outside San Francisco where the vibes were strongly Mexican, says its designer Hannah Bowen, who then used collages of coloured paper for jazzy abstract effects. Ethnic gets an upgrade here, with patterns for Bowen’s target “urban tribes”.
Zapara by Harlequin hints at the Amazonian rainforest, while Osborne & Little looks to the sun-bleached Italian Riviera, all indigo and azure.
Geometrics abound, even from Tricia Guild, ace operator of petal power. Watch out for her metallic wallpaper flocks on pearlescent grounds.
But flowers will always be the Designers Guild founder’s signature and she offers a garden of delicate paintwork in her new Giardino Secreto edit.
“I adore Paris,” Guild says. “The French love colour and are innately confident in its use.” To its unrivalled library of 5,000 textures, Designers Guild brings Brera Moda, with 40 soft-washed shades in heavy linen.
As for colours, no single shade is paramount at the show. Rather there are mixes of subtle tints, including soft greys and buttermilk from Designers Guild, or midnight and ink with copper and bronze from Osborne & Little.