Photo: Volcano Explosion by Showroom Dummies.
Kristen Bailey gets hung up about Flock 'n' Roll: New Ideas in Wallpaper Design, at the Geffrye Museum, London until August 31.
Wallpaper, out of favour with the minimalist cognoscenti for years, is back. The glossy design magazines are full of wallpaper’s rising stars: Timorous Beasties, Tracy Kendall, Neisha Crosland and Rachel Kelly.
So the Geffrye Museum has assembled an inspiring selection of the best in contemporary wallpaper design.
The designs are hung in single drops as gallery pieces, rather than being on show in a room setting. This isn’t your bog standard Anaglypta™ or woodchip. This is designer stuff - designed to be displayed in a frame, as a single drop or as a large-scale repeat.
The Interior Landscape section contrasts the antique with the modern.
De Gournay’s Belton is a modern reproduction of the chinoiserie style landscapes popular with the wealthy in the 17th century, painted onto silk and backed with paper to allow it to be removed and rehung. It costs hundreds of pounds for a single roll – you’ll want to take it with you when you move!
Photo: Long Flower by Rachel Kelly.
Shattering this genteel mood completely is Erupting Volcano by Showroom Dummies, a vast monochrome explosion in several sections. Hanging this in your lounge may well ruin the atmosphere for Last of the Summer Wine…
Many of the designers are working across design disciplines. Fashion design duo Eley Kishimoto have produced stunning 1930s-style prints to be used for both wallpaper and dress fabrics.
Barking, a wood effect print of marquetry circles is by hemingwaydesign - Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway, formerly of fashion house Red Or Dead.
Claire Coles works on the plain side of an ordinary roll of wallpaper, ripping and embroidering to overlay it with machine-stitched appliqués. She makes beautiful brooches in exactly the same way.
Many of the papers explore texture. Tracy Kendal’s In The White Room, inspired by cladding and brickwork, is constructed from lots of small sheets stitched to a backing paper. The result is full of complex shadows and movement.
Photo: Barking by Hemingwaydesign for Graham and Brown.
Others are inspired by the latest technology, such as Jocelyn Warner’s Oval Shimmer, printed with light-reflective ink originally developed for use on the Ford Ka.
Most intriguing are the 'interactive' papers – designs which can be altered or added to according to the taste of the buyer.
Craig Wood and Chris Taylor’s Frames, a pattern of blank picture frames, is ready for you to add to. Their aim, they say, was to break "the taboo of graffiti and writing on walls". Now you can fully express yourself at home, guilt-free.
Jenny Wilkinson’s Paint-By-Numbers wallpapers were inspired by her interest in kids’ toys. Here you can have a go at colouring it in yourself, or pick up a roll (complete with numbered pots of paint) in the museum shop.
My favourite of all the designs on show has to be Rachel Kelly’s Long Flower paper – an abstract floral print overlaid with matt and metallic stick-on motifs, which you arrange yourself as desired.
Kelly’s work is so popular now that she was recently commissioned by drinks giant Baileys to create a wallpaper inspired by cult TV show Sex and the City. How much more fashionable can you get?
