Skopos Celebrate 50 Years
The early 70’s saw the birth of a new textile business in the Yorkshire town of Batley. With design and innovation at the heart of everything, three local art college students came together to build an energetic business, delivering eye-catching printed fabrics into healthcare and hospitality interiors. The students were influenced by graphics seen in Greek pattern/environments and began developing bold repeating textile prints and hand-printing fabrics, on-site in Yorkshire. Deriving from the Greek word for ‘purpose’ the business became known as Skopos.
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Designs were hand-made to order and early collections used simple, bold shapes, the perfect backdrop to modern 1970’s interior spaces. Mixing colours by hand to deliver on on-trend solution, the Skopos team created dramatic, eye-catching designs that became synonymous with the Skopos Brand.
At this early stage the business made the decision to partner with a company with expertise in flame retardancy fabric treatment, realising the requirement to deliver against certain safety standards for textiles within contract interiors.
Demand grew in the UK, covering markets including healthcare, hospitality, cruise and ferry and then started to gain momentum overseas with big orders coming in from the Middle East.
2022 marks the celebration of 50 years! As a tribute to this milestone, throughout this year, Skopos will be looking back at some of their favourite designs over this half century. The 50th Anniversary Collection will see some of these authentic landmark designs reborn using contemporary design production techniques. The evolved designs will be developed in line with current trends for use within contract interiors today. Each month these ‘new’ designs will be brought to life on our website and samples made available in the usual way.
Starting off the Anniversary calendar, the Duo and Tetra designs were originally part of a Skopos range called DECCAHEDRON (Decca being 10 in the Greek alphabet).
The range consisted of 10 drape designs, aimed at the hospitality market, with large, bold geometric printed shapes and simplistic two-tone contrast.
Duo and Tetra embody the 1970’s style with their audacious use of flat shapes in repeating patterns. Deliberately bold, they were the perfect backdrop to the modern 1970’s interior space – exuding a cool confidence and drama.
Designed, woven and hand-screen printed in Yorkshire, the original designs were hand made to order. Screens were produced in-house and colours, mixed by hand, were influenced by the interior trends of the day.
The Duo and Tetra designs kick off Skopos’ 50th Anniversary celebration with samples of the 4 skus available to order via their website. These revisited designs have been re-coloured and reworked to fall in-line with today’s trends and the scales have been manipulated to work effectively across different soft furnishings, including cushions, upholstery and curtains.
As with all Skopos prints, customers will be able to order the ‘Anniversary’ designs across a number of base-cloths, including upholstery velvets and various drape qualities for use in any project. For bespoke colourways, their design team will be able to help.
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