Collarged is a collection of 17 printed textile designs featuring oversized abstract forms in bright primary colours inspired by playgrounds, skate parks and climbing walls. “This collection works to inject a feeling of recreation into interior environments through the use of strong, graphic pattern and placement,” the surface pattern designer told Design Geek.
Katherine took field trips to the urban environments that formed the starting point for her collection, gathered images and created cut-paper collages and compositions. She then scaled these up before translating them into Photoshop to create the pattern repeats. The chosen designs are then screen-printed by hand onto 100{ff546b69e23b1524d799f96c6ba7a638e1f677053b0a2a1568b05315fd5f8fc7} cotton. “I still have a lot of designs and development pieces that didn’t make it onto fabric,” she says.
The collection was designed for interior use, but Katherine believes its application could be wider. “I like the idea of [my designs] being used for whatever the consumer wants them for,” she says. “I’m hugely inspired by a Swedish design collective called Tio Gruppen, whose work was used for both interior and fashion purposes.”
Tio Gruppen was founded in the 1970s by ten young textile designers who wanted to take control of the entire process of producing good Swedish design. The company has exhibited its bold prints and textiles globally and its outlet in Stockholm’s Södermalm remains a destination for pattern fans from all over the world. It is still owned and run by three of the founding members: Birgitta Hahn, Tom Hedqvist and Ingela Håkansson, who design all its fabrics today.
Katherine’s work also echoes the Memphis style. The Memphis Group was an Italian design and architecture group founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass in 1981 that designed Postmodern furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass and metal objects from 1981 to 1987, inspired by movements such as Art Deco and Pop Art and the 1950s Kitsch and futuristic styles. Despite being described variously as “bizarre,” “misunderstood,” “loathed” and even by Bertrand Pellegrin as “a shotgun wedding between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price,” the style is currently undergoing a resurgence that can be seen in the work of British designer Lee Broom and the recent revival of designs by original Memphis member Nathalie du Pasquier by Danish brand Hay.
A small selection of cushions made with Katherine’s fabrics are already available to buy from her online shop and she is currently working on turning more of her designs into products and home accessories. Watch this space!
Collarged was launched at graduate design show New Designers in July, following her graduation from Central Saint Martins earlier this year.
