Pattern & wallpaper
The Pattern Works
One interlocking geometry, worked out over more than a decade and put onto every surface I could reach. It started as a single printed sheet, became a wallpaper, and has since gone onto cloth, walls, bar floors, a Christmas cracker and the inside of a van. This is the pattern, and everywhere it has been.
The First Wallpaper
The 3 Wise Monkeys in Todmorden, 2013. The first time the flat printed pattern went onto a wall as proper wallpaper, at room scale, rather than staying a single sheet. Getting a repeat to line up across a whole wall is a different discipline to printing one poster, and this Todmorden job was where I worked it out. It is still up there, and the leftover roll went on to a second life as street art.
Off the Page
Once the pattern could tile a wall it went everywhere flat. Hand-printed cloth and wallpaper runs in every colourway, and the full-spectrum mural screen printed and pasted up the outside of Wine and Wallop in Didsbury, the geometry taken outdoors and up onto a building at scale.
The Vocabulary
A run of distinct pattern languages, mostly 2016: wallpaper drawn from Islamic geometry, the MCR design built entirely from the city’s three letters woven into a weave, a hard-edged tessellation in flat primary colours, and fine white circles on black. Different grammars, same instinct, a shape that locks into itself and carries on in every direction.
Pattern Everywhere
The pattern stopped respecting the line between a surface and an object. A Greek-key border screen printed straight onto the wooden floor of Wallop. A giant Christmas cracker made of hand-printed wallpaper. A small range of cushions and tea towels. And the inside of a van, lined wall to wall with the cube-and-diamond geometry to make a mobile studio.
More of the Pattern
Off the page and onto walls, floors, wallpaper, cut panels and prints. A run through the pattern in the wild.
From the Journal
The Pattern, Entry by Entry
More than a decade of the pattern across paper, cloth, walls, floors and a van, tracked through the journal.
Questions
What is The Pattern Works?
One interlocking geometry, worked out over more than a decade and put onto every surface I could reach. It started as a single printed sheet, became a wallpaper, and has since gone onto cloth, walls, bar floors, a Christmas cracker and the inside of a van.
Where did the pattern first go up as wallpaper?
The 3 Wise Monkeys in Todmorden, in 2013. That was the first time the flat printed pattern went onto a wall at room scale rather than staying a single sheet. It is still up there.
How is the wallpaper made?
Screen printed by hand, colourway by colourway. Getting a repeat to line up across a whole wall is a different discipline to printing one poster, and the Todmorden job was where I worked that out.
Can I commission wallpaper or a pattern?
Yes, from a single feature wall to a whole space, designed and printed by hand.
What can it go on?
Paper, fabric, walls, floors, products, vehicles. If it holds ink, it can hold the pattern.
Is each one a one-off?
The patterns are drawn to repeat, but every print run is hand-pulled, so the colourways and scale are made to the job.
Where can the pattern be seen?
The first wallpaper is still up at the 3 Wise Monkeys in Todmorden, where it went on in 2013. The full-spectrum mural on the outside of Wine and Wallop in Didsbury has since gone.
Commission