Sketch Series: Ella Richards for Linwood

During the London Design Festival we took the opportunity to meet with designers to discuss their most recent work.  At the heart of the London Design Fair was Linwood’s stand, abundant in colour and pattern, on which we took the opportunity to sit down with Linwood Designer Ella Richards to discuss their new fabric collections.  Ella sketched her favourite of the designs whilst we talked.

Can you tell me a little bit about the design process behind your new collection?

Sure, well our best selling fabric is a plain velvet called Omega, and we thought we would experiment with printing on it. Turns out it looks great!  So we went through all of our archives and selected our favorite designs and worked them up into repeats.  Then we colored each one for our modern customers, and hopefully in the book there’s a good variety of designs, something for everyone.  We’ve created really bold, contemporary, blocky designs and then we’ve got wonderful 1930’s inspired florals.

Which part of the design process or which elements of this collection did you enjoy the most?

Probably the design called Les Fauves which is a 1930’s floral. I just love coloring it. It was fantastic! So yes, it’s probably the coloring process which I enjoy the most, it’s exciting!

OMEGA is a brand new collection of stain resistant printed velvets from Linwood. Using their ever-popular high performance Omega Velvet as the base, they have created an eclectic range of bold prints.

The collection features 50 colourways over 16 designs and includes conversationals, florals and geometrics in styles from contemporary through to classical, all with one thing in common, the soft matt feel of Omega Velvet. The collection is both stain resistant and inherently fire retardant.  

One of the collection’s conversational designs ‘Japanese Garden’ comes from an archival design, and the colourway ‘Dayglow’ which surprisingly, with its almost luminous yellow, is faithful in colour to the original document. ‘The Wave’ is a favourite in the Linwood design studio. This design was sourced from an archive in Paris and is reminiscent of the work of the painter Hokusai with its dramatic undulating waves.

‘Les Fauves’ is a hand painted floral with a 1930’s influence. The colourways are contemporary yet pretty with cornflower, electric blue, olive and turquoise alongside pinks and coral.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:   Composition – Polyester 100%.  Width – 137cm.  Upholstery Grade – General Domestic Upholstery, Contract Upholstery.  Martindale Rub Test – 100,000.  FR Rating – A.

Contact Linwood