exhibiting and promotion

Pattern design, outdoors and in…

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If you are a regular reader of this blog you will already know that for the last few years my personal design practice has been inspired by garden design, and most specifically allotments and kitchen gardens in my ‘Plot to Plate‘ collection, launched in 2012. I have spent many hours walking, almost patrolling, up and down rows of National Trust cabbages and onions, armed with my sketchbook, annotating the patterns, translating them to motifs, documenting the small irregularities, the planting plans, the labeling – fruit and vegetables up and down the country, as well as our allotment, plot 8 in Birmingham. Upton, Packwood, Baddesley Clinton, Blickling, Felbrigg, to name a few National Trust gardens I have surveyed and taken inspiration from. Hanbury is my current favourite garden and I have been working on a number of patterns inspired by this property that will one day be complete, to launch at Tent London this September.

It is with this in mind that I write my thoughts. There are so many similarities between garden design and textile design they seem perfect companions in my practice. Long before Mr W. Morris picked up a pencil the natural world of flora has been a dominant subject of inspiration for pattern in the home. Rather than the bouquets and sprigs, posies and trellis it is the formal gardens, the parterres and kitchen gardens that hold the structure and compositional language that we textile designers and design educators regularly refer to…

Stripes, spot repeats, all-overs and multi-directionals, geometric grids and diamonds, checks and plaids are all to see. And so it is, that it makes sense that I really have brought two things that I do enjoy together in my creative practice. It’s too early to share artwork for my new ‘Hanbury’ designs but I will share some garden pattern from Hanbury, and my ‘new’ fabrics by the metre, available very soon, in anticipation…

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‘Chelsea’ drawings to design for David Mellor Design

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Many months ago I had the go-ahead from Corin Mellor to design a bespoke pattern to celebrate the fabulous ‘Chelsea’ salad servers that he designed for David Mellor Design. When I first saw the cutlery I immediately really liked the look of them and when I received the servers they were amazing to hold – they still are. Impressive in weight and size, the shape is simple yet stunning, and they inspired me to set about drawing. With a number of design options I provided Corin Mellor, Creative Director and his retail team, they discussed and advised, and before long we agreed on this design that is now printed on to linen union tea towels and sold on my website, David Mellor shops in Hathersage and London as well as Museums Sheffield.

With the tea towel now listed in the ‘Special Products’ section of the David Mellor catalogue I thought it time to show some of the images I have of the process. I took inspiration from my visit to the factory in Hathersage where they make and display the cutlery production process as well as the objects themselves.

I’ve had great feedback and sales, we are having another print-run and they’ve received press in the form of Elle Decoration!

Thanks also to Patternbooth and Design Hunter:

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Kate Farley – Plotting Prints at Tinsmiths

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It is a very exciting time for me. It has been about two years in the planning and preparation stages and now we are a week in to my show at Tinsmiths. For those of you unfamiliar with Tinsmiths, it is a beautiful textile and lighting shop in the lovely Herefordshire market town of Ledbury. It is a beautifully considered shop, owned by Phoebe Clive, selling a wide range of fabrics as well as home wares, crafted pieces and artists prints.

I have worked closely with Phoebe to translate my lino printed designs inspired by allotments, to become a collection of heavy weight linen, hand screen printed textiles available to buy as cushions. We have also created larger showroom pieces as curtains and upholstered chairs in preparation for selling some of the designs by the metre later in the year.

Phoebe and the team have styled my products throughout the top floor of the premises in such a way as to create a clean and fresh interior space, working with the other products and furniture pieces in the shop. My prints and drawings are set amongst other exciting colour statements in the form of ceramics & lighting with an understated aesthetic. With plenty of positive feedback at the PV as well as sales throughout the first week it’s a really exciting reward for the long journey to this point.

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Hanbury Hall delights

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My creative practice has been inspired by National Trust gardens for the last few years and as a result I’ve had a number of people suggest I visit Hanbury Hall – finally I got round to it at the weekend. Despite the poor weather it was a delight to discover all the pockets of gardens, each carefully considered, and demonstrating the wide variety of formal and informal planting the National Trust excels at.

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Armed with my sketchbook and camera I gathered plenty of inspiration for new prints and will definitely be back later in the season.

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Its also a fantastic building inside and out. I dashed around the inside and a particular wallpaper caught my attention.

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All in all, I left feeling excited about making new work again having spent so long preparing for my solo show at Tinsmiths, opening later this month… now where did I put that lino?

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holding on to the details…

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This photo was taken at Birmingham’s old science museum in its last days before demolition as I was carrying out research for subsequent commissions inspired by the site. It goes some way to sum up how things are in the studio at the moment with many lists and scraps of precious information as I am very busy with making new prints & promoting my upcoming show at Tinsmiths, Ledbury next month as well as coordinating suppliers and working on exciting new design work. All this in the break between Spring and Summer terms of my lecturing job…

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Design inspirations 1: horizon lines

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For a while now I’ve been thinking about what has shaped my visual language and informed my art and design tastes. As a result I have planned a few blog entries in which I will evidence some of my thoughts in terms of influence and my art / design practice.

In some recent press interviews I’ve been asked about my inspiration and I tend to consider the formative years as pretty vital in this regard. It makes sense that we develop strong feelings and bonds to what we experience as children, either to reject them or embrace them – either way I believe those early years help to form our adult judgements.

Looking beyond the windows of the house in rural Norfolk where I was brought up is what I consider one of the greatest inspirations to my work. The open fields, the clear horizon lines and sparse distractions across the farmland of Norfolk have stayed with me in relation to my way of seeing, composition and economy of information in much of my work. Why draw ten lines when I can say it with one? I had a particularly horrid visiting tutor in the beginning of my training who felt that I was lazy in my designing, when actually it was he who struggled with some of the simplicity I was aiming for.

Looking back over some of the works I have made in the last fifteen years there are a few key pieces that explain that relationship with the horizon.

‘Nine Perspectives’, a linocut is made up of diagrams where I explore the land, sea and sky in a variety of ways. I consider the horizon in two-dimensional form, in plan view, elevations and diagrammatic perspectives in order to gain a sense of order.

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‘Meadows (France)’ is a drawing of a beautifully simple valley near Gourdon. It gave me a perfect view to explore further skewed interpretations of perspectives seen in the landscape. I worked with a sense of the view working round a set square, with two horizons, as I looked in front and to the side of me.

stgermain_webThe final image is from a screen printed artist’s book I made several years ago exploring the idea of ‘half full’ as a state of mind, but also from each side of the horizon line. I have used the blue areas as either half full of water (the Norfolk Broads specifically) or half full of sky above the chickens. The folded structure implies a view through the use of perspective, looking in to the distance or reflecting on oneself.

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These three works are very old as far as I’m concerned. I have new creative concerns now but they have helped me to test and explore principles in the way that I see and draw that have been important along the way.

sharing the design process of Plot to Plate

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Given that I am about to take my Plot to Plate collection of designs to Top Drawer this weekend I thought people might be interested in the design journey of ideas that result in such a collection of pattern.

My ideas tend to belong as series of thoughts that I explore in a number of drawings over months, and sometimes years. I challenge myself to explore many ways to represent the same things, often resulting in simplified motifs, some would say scribbles. Drawings are often in rather utilitarian handmade sketchbooks that are not precious so there is no fear of the white blank page before I start. Sometime, in fact quite often, I draw while walking, and trying not to look conspicuous or weird as I track my way round a National Trust kitchen garden, almost creating a diagram, literally a planting plan as I go. Sometimes I make notes in my drawings, of colours, names of plants from the labels in the ground, or note references to research at a later date.

The titles of some of my designs are: xvo, xo, xxvv and these come from the shorthand I created in order to document gardens and allotments as I paced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the studio, and for sometime after I dwell, I study, I revisit the motifs, rhythms and compositions I gathered, I redraw, formalise and create new pieces, as one-off drawings in series to exhibit and sell. Some compositions lend themselves to self-contained lino prints or screenprints and so I spend time developing the designs, cutting the plates, and enjoying the process of editioning. I could never imagine getting bored (my edition sizes are small!) of lifting the paper from an inked block, each time to discover the image. So low-tech, yet engaging.

At this point I notice elements that can be scanned in and reworked in Photoshop or Illustrator software to create repeat designs and colourways for further potential – and this is how I created the design collection of ‘Plot to Plate’.

The Plot to Plate signature design of garden, kitchen and dining tools also came from my playing with the dog-tooth check as a classic rhythm, and my keen interest in telling a story as a visual narrative. Pattern can of course be pretty, but I enjoy the challenge of asking it to communicate something beyond itself. In this instance my drawings were made directly for this purpose and I translated them for screen.

I hope the images explain the fun I have had, and the pride that I feel in this collection.

 

More examples of prints and drawings can be found on my website gallery pages

www.katefarley.co.uk

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sneak a peek

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In the run up to my adventure at TopDrawer as part of Spotted I thought you might like to see some of my latest printing. It’s all systems go for my ‘Plot to Plate’ collection as I print, stitch and prepare for my stand SP6. If you plan to visit the show between the 16th and 18th September at Olympia, London, do come and say hello.

http://www.topdrawer.co.uk

spreading the word…

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The last month has been a good one in terms of getting some exposure for the Plot to Plate range and in particular the notebooks. As previously mentioned Elle Deco have included the books in their shopping pages, and WGSN Homebuildlife.com included them on their blog. Having had them also included on the beautiful Design Hunter blog(http://www.designhunter.co.uk) now I can add to that list Global Colour’s Mix magazine including the notebooks in their Micro Trends spread – thanks to all!

taking note…

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WGSN Homebuildlife.com include my Plot to Plate notebooks on their blog – many thanks!

http://wgsn-hbl.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/plot-to-plate-allotment-inspired-pattern.html

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