Introducing Weft and Warp

Today I’m sharing a project I’ve been following for months by Brooklyn-based designer Charlotte Graves of Weft & Warp. I had the great pleasure of working with Charlotte during my time at Starwood Hotels & Resorts (she trained me on my first day!) and we’ve kept a close friendship all these months later. Quickly Charlotte and I realized we shared a love of textiles design and screen printing, and this love of textiles and craft lead her to create Weft & Warp, a line of hand crafted silk scarves. Charlotte recently launched W&W’s online shop featuring her first collection for Weft & Warp and I couldn’t be more proud of her and the amazing work she’s done. While the scarves are beautiful in design and craft, I’m just as in love with the identity system she created for the brand.

Weft & Warp
Handcrafted silk scarves inspired by a love of the land.

We are culturally curious. We find creative kinship in those who use craft to preserve the heritage of their people. In the same way, every scarf we make is the product of a unique memory. Every collection a chapter in our own history. Land. Craft. Heritage. These are the tools of our trade. This is the fabric of Weft & Warp.

Look books (above and below), – how great do these look? I love the playful application of the W&W logo.

Packaging (above). Each scarf comes in one of these custom envelopes. Now onto the scarves!

The current collection, available at www.shop.weftandwarp.com

My favorite, the Isabel (above and below).

The Jessica.

I’m absolutely IN LOVE with how the website changes each time you refresh the page with new patterns.

Charlotte, the designer behind Weft & Warp above.

To learn more about W&W, check out their website, shop the collection and see what they’re up to on tumblr!

And finally, see their first look book below. ❤

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Lotta Kuhlorn: Book Designer

Earlier in June, I blogged about Lotta Kühlhorn, the Swedish pattern, textile, product and graphic designer. I was first attracted to Lotta for her beautiful pattern and textile designs that cover tea towels, cutting boards and trays in many Scandinavian stores, but she’s done an impressive amount of book cover design, the holy grail of graphic design. I wanted to take a moment to look at this work more closely. So sit back and enjoy more of the work of Lotta Kühlhorn, and if you’d like to see her pattern/textile designs, check my earlier post here.

I also really like this style of her illustrations.

Hope you enjoyed seeing more work from Lotta Kuhlorn.
Check out her website here.

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Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel

Today as I was enjoying my morning coffee and browsing Tumblr, I stumbled across the image above from the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg Brooklyn. As coincidence would have it, I visited the Wythe Hotel last week for dinner + drinks and fell in love with the place, but I’d only seen the lobby and restaurant. Freshome, a design and architecture blog, recently featured the hotel on their website showing a bunch of beautiful photos. I love that the building was a textile mill in its former life and was renovated into a beautiful modern day hotel with much of its original character intact. After spending so long designing for a hotel company, I can really appreciate all the design and details that go into these projects.

The Hotel’s press release states, “Built in 1901, this former textile factory has been meticulously converted into a 72-room hotel offering service and amenities yet to be seen in the borough, while the building’s industrial character – like its concave corner entrance, original pine beams, masonry, arched windows and cast-iron columns – has been beautifully preserved.  Renowned Brooklyn restaurateur Andrew Tarlow, of Marlow & Sons, Diner, and Roman’s, manages the hotel’s expansive food and beverage program. Venues include Reynards – a ground floor restaurant and bar with a wood-fired oven and grill, courtyard seating, and a daily menu featuring market-driven American fare and seasonal cocktails, and Ides – a 6th floor bar and terrace with stunning Manhattan and Brooklyn views.”

Beautiful view right?

Library.

Lobby.

Guestroom.

Love the headboard wall detail.

Beautiful pattern.

Bathroom.

Really like their logo and the design of their website, beautiful really.

These simply line drawings of the room layouts are really quite nice.

They have a custom-made neon sign outside. Absolutely STUNNING at night.

The map.

For more information, visit their website here.

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Weaving Community at Herman Miller

The fine folks at Herman Miller created a great page on their site for anyone looking a new desktop, ipad or iphone wallpaper. On their Weaving Community page, Herman Miller asks, “As people work more together—much of it digitally—they place increasing value on interacting with others face to face. How do we define community?”

The enormous changes in how, where, and with whom people work necessitate a nuanced approach to workplace design. Community spaces for social and knowledge sharing are balanced with those that enable concentrative individual work. A variety of space types allows choice, helping people engage more deeply. Sixty years ago, designer George Nelson said the ultimate office should be like a daytime living room. We embrace his blurring of work and life in the Herman Miller Collection, authentic modern design for how we live and work today. – Herman Miller

On the site are 10 responses about the importance of community and working together in well-designed spaces hidden behind beautiful pattern designs by the likes of Alexander Girard and other Herman Miller artists. So get into the inspiration and down free pattern here on on their site.

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Introducing Lotta Kühlhorn, illustrator + pattern designer

Photo: Anna-Lena Ahlström

Today I’m sharing the work of Scandinavian pattern/textile designer and illustrator Lotta Kühlhorn. I stumbled across Lotta’s work while browsing the Huset Shop website (a great place for Scandinavian design inspiration) and immediately recognized her work from my travels to Sweden and Denmark last summer. Lotta is a great example of a designer using bold graphic colors and prints to create simple yet beautiful pattern designs. I particularly enjoy her fruit and vegetable patterns. According to her bio on Huset Shop,

Lotta Kühlhorn is a Swedish-born illustrator and designer. She started her professional career while attending Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design. Lotta is known for her bold patterns and vibrant colors. In the 1990s, she was one of the first Swedish designers to begin experimenting with the graphic elements of “junk culture,” using pop art, films and mass produced items as the basis for her inspirations. Lotta’s simple “happy-making” products are inspired by her childhood and feature a bit of retro seventies style. –Huset Shop. 

I really love that she turned ‘junk culture’ or things considered lowbrow into beautiful patterns and works of art. What I really enjoy about Scandinavian Design in general is designers in this genre use simple elements, patterns and shapes found around them and create pieces of art from it. It’s not that deep and conceptual … and THANK GOD! Scandinavian design is stripped down to its simplest elements and is therefore democratic and more accessible to a larger population. That’s what I’d like to do with my work. Just look at IKEA and H&M, two Swedish designed brands with simple, honest approaches to design and world-wide appeal. I don’t think as designers we should be creating barriers to understanding and communication. But I digress ..

I also like that Lotta designs book covers, which as a graphic designer myself, I really connect to.  So check out her work below, on Huset Shop and on her website here. Enjoy!

I love her simple illustrative style. Great for patterns and surface design.

Pear Mugs.

Pear Tray – cute right?

Hotplate.

Apples.

As an illustrator, her work varies in complexity of pattern.

Great kitchen illustration. Love.

Lotta uses this same approach to book cover design. I want a set of all her books!

I’m going to blog more about her book cover designs later this week, so stay tuned! Hope you enjoyed the work of Lotta Kuhlorn so far!

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Revisiting Florence Broadhurst

 

In February I blogged about the work of wallpaper/pattern designer Florence Broadhurst after Kate Spade NY featured her iconic prints in their new collection. I was so inspired by her work and story that I bought her biography, Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives by Helen O’Neill. I finally got to reading it this weekend and I couldn’t put it down! Broadhurst was an amazingly complicated woman: singer, actor, clothing designer, socialite, truck yard operator, and finally, iconic wallpaper designer in her 70’s. How could one person lead so many lives? Her life came to an untimely end when she was brutally murdered in her studio and her murder remains unsolved until this day.

It was particularly interesting to hear about her life and travels, and how it influenced the studio she lead for over 15 years. In the book you learn about her curious methods, the artists she hired to work for her, many of whom were incredibly young and how she constantly reinvented herself. You also get to see the huge breath of her work, which stands close to 500 different pattern designs.

Sadly after Broadhurst’s death, her designs were quickly forgotten. Wallpaper went out of fashion and so did the bold iconic designs for which she was known. Minimalism was in. For years her screens lay unused in a factory falling into decay. There were several times when all her designs were almost thrown away because they were deemed to expensive to even store. It wasn’t until the 1990s that her work was rediscovered, collected and restored. Luckily for us, her work was saved and is being produced by hand once again day by Signature Prints.

Florence and her crazy orange hair at her desk. On the wall is Peacocks, one of her favorite prints.

Many of her wallpaper prints were printed on gold and silver Mylar.

Japanese Floral, one of her most well-known prints.
This print was used for Kate Spade’s Florence Broadhurst collection (below).

A modern take on classic Broadhurst (above).

While a lot of her designs were organic and featured scenes of nature, many her designs were also bold and geometric.

Today her work can be seen on more than just wallpaper. Signature Prints, which owns the rights to Broadhurst’s collection now reproduces them on rugs, pillows, furniture and or course, wallpaper.

It’s amazing to see patterns designed in the 60s/70s and almost forgotten now used in such modern ways 40 plus years later.

She seems like quite the powerhouse person to know at the time. If you want to know more, pick up her book here or check out Signature Prints website about their collection featuring images, bios and videos all about Florence Broadhurst. I hope you enjoy her work as much as I continue to do so!

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Kate (Spade) + Florence (Broadhurst)

Get into this video from the Spring 2012 campaign from the folks at Kate Spade NY featuring the work of textile designer Florence Broadhurst. I’m really digging the black and white graphic patterns paired with pops of neon color. From a design standpoint this is really cool – I’m all about black + white plus a pop of color (or two). Before seeing the video and checking out Kate Spade’s blog I’d never heard of Broadhurst. Just like Maija Isola at Marimekko, Broadhurst seems like a larger than life personality with equally large artistic talent. It’s nice to see female textile designers hitting it big now, and pattern/textile design coming more and more in fashion. I feel like the whole practice of textile and pattern design is finally starting to get the praise it deserves.

There’s an interesting article about Broadhurst on Architecture Digest here. AD writes,

There have been women in history, such as the hostesses of the 18thcentury Parisian salons, who had the charisma and the discrimination to gather talent around them and associate themselves with it. Florence Broadhurst—chanteuse in Shanghai in the 1920s, couturier on Bond Street in the ’30s, painter in Australia in the ’50s and designer of extraordinary wallpaper from the early ’60s until her brutal and unsolved murder in the ’70s—was such a personality. Broadhurst’s legacy of 530 hand-printed wallpapers was bought by David Lennie in 1989 as part of a 5,000-piece archive called Signature Prints. “The power is in the sheer size of her work,” says Lennie.

There is no question that it was Broadhurst’s larger-than-life personality, marked by a strident voice bursting from a slight frame under a dome of bright orange hair, that inspired the collection and marketed it. Without Florence Broadhurst, there would be no Florence Broadhurst wallpapers.

No such thing as too much pattern!

See – Black & White and neon – how great does that look?

Sweet suitcase.

The book – buying this today!

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Airport Posters

The last few months I’ve been working with patterns and environmental graphics for one of my projects at work and I wanted to share this project by Lian Ng & Jean Orlebeke. I stumbled across it years ago while looking through Dwell magazine and I’m so happy I found a site that has all the prints. For $125 one can be yours! According to Publique Living,

This series of artwork inspired is by the distinctive architectural element from buildings around the world. Whether it be a pattern or shape that distinguishes these buildings, it is the first layer of visual iconic recognition. The cities in which these buildings reside in are called out by their airport code instead of their names, creating another layer of graphic distinction, akin to the visual alignment between architectural elements and buildings. The codes also function as a beacon of destination, proclaiming the cities’ association with inspiring architecture. An interpretive project from Lian Ng and Jean Orlebeke, in limited edition of 180, available unframed only.

I love the idea of this project, being inspired by architectural forms and turning that inspiration into graphic patterns and prints. In my project at work I’m trying to find ways to turn basic shapes into compelling repeat patterns for use on walls and glass throughout a building. It’s definitely a challenge but this project is a great example of how simple (or complex) shapes and lines can create compelling graphics. Here are a few of my favorites … now if anyone would like to get me a print for my bday … I’d love you long time.

You can purchase prints here, at Publique Living.

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Marimekko Flagship NYC

This weekend I finally made it to the new Marimekko NYC Flagship store just across from the Flatiron Building in NYC. I was curious to see how the design of the store might differ from the shops I saw in Helsinki and Copenhagen during my summer abroad. The NY store was pretty big and had lots of stuff in it! There are different sections for home products, bedding, kids stuff and women and MENS! fashion. I had no idea they were making men’s fashion items – but I’m glad they are. It’s worth stopping by to see all the beautiful printed textiles on the rolls and see how the designers apply these prints for different uses. You can notice how the scale of the pattern shifts for use on a pillow vs. a dress vs. a shower curtain or a coffee mug. It’s really inspiring to see all these beautiful prints housed together in one place and step into their colourful world.

I was also happy to find another copy of their Fall/Autumn mailer. I’d found a copy in the Copenhagen store and I really loved all the dark colors and reds they used together in that campaign. You can tell they’re making a push to enter the high fashion market and diversify beyond home goods. I think they’re off to the right track! Here are a few images below for your viewing pleasure.

I love the contrast between B&W and pops of red, so bold and graphic. Much more my style and taste .. too bad there is not a men’s version of this.

They also have a lot of pieces inspired by the beautiful birch trees found throughout most of Scandinavia.

I love the textile hanging at the bottom. Not sure how to use it on clothes, since it’s such a huge repeat. But it would look BEAUTIFUL framed/hung on a wall.

Here’s a look that pairs well with the pattern behind – but you can see they didn’t apply it directly to any pieces. It would have to be used very abstractly.

Also while you’re there, pick up their Holiday 2011 catalog.

I love the graphic design of all the Marimekko stuff- lots of big type.

Holiday Prints!

Looks like a party right? These dresses are pretty cool, with the black tights and shoes.

The store is located at 200 5th Ave in NYC – check it out!

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DCW Design for Jonathan Adler

As most of you know, last spring I was given the extraordinary opportunity to intern for the one and only Jonathan Adler, purveyor of all things happy and chic. Now is an exciting time because most of the things I’ve designed for JA are finally hitting stores and online. One of the items I’m most excited about is the Peace & Love coasters I designed. For this project, I had just a few hours to design two sets of coasters for Saks Off 5th. One design was to use a British Flag motif while the other should use art from the existing Peace & Love pillows. To make a long story short, Jonathan liked the coasters above so much, he decided to sell them in our stores and I created another simplified version of the Peave & Love artwork for Saks Off 5th.

I designed 4 different patterns using British Flag design motifs. I really likes the ones with the strips – very nautical right?

Final Design – available now at Saks Off 5th !!

Another big project was the packaging for the 2011 holiday ornaments. In the middle of March we designed these. Who knew Christmas came in the spring?

Mr + Mrs. Muse ornament packaging.

I created the pattern on the box, which is made of the iconic lips and mustache used in the Jonathan Adler Muse collection.

Another project that was super exciting is this line of typographic needlepoint pillows we designed for an upcoming Jonathan Adler book. The chapters of the book are divided into the following sections: dwell, embrace, explore, twist, and ponder. I love to play around with type, so this was the perfect project for me. I had the idea to limit each pillow to a few typefaces and colors. One pillow would have type in shades of green (dwell, see above), another red (twist) and another blue (ponder). One of the things I LOVED about working for Jonathan Adler was the ability to work on fun projects like this with crazy typefaces. In the design work I do for most clients, I’d never dream of using these typefaces, but somehow all together they’re fun and chic. Something about this style really works for Jonathan Adler and isn’t seen anywhere else.

One last project I was super excited about was a line or prints JA was developing for a big picture frame & art company. I’m not sure what happened to this project, but I spend several days coming up with really cool type prints based on Jonathan Adler’s “Alderisms” or words and phrases JA uses a lot in their stores. Sadly this is the only one I have a copy of. How cute would this be in your apartment right?

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