Behind the design: Misselthwaite

Misselthwaite wallpaper: Charcoal. Photograph: Alun Callender

Walking in the woods near my home one day, with my whippet Claude and my daughters, a tree had fallen and the most beautiful, curved clump of twisted vines, had fallen off it. It was so big that I needed help carrying it home. I hung on to it for a couple of years, leaving it in the garden whilst an idea for a design slowly formed before I began to draw directly from the old vines and did multiple charcoal sketches. I chose the aspects of these sketches that I liked the most and redrew them on a larger scale, entwining the various sections of drawings together to create long, gnarled, twisted, creeping vines, which eventually became ‘Misselthwaite,’ named after the unloved manor house where the secret garden of Frances Hodgeson-Burnett’s novel is set.

The branches that I drew from. Photograph: Carmel King

I don’t want to just create pretty wallpapers, although I do want them to make a space feel beautiful. I like each pattern to have a little depth and story behind it, to ground a room. I want this depiction of the stillness of the age old twisted vines to create a feeling of timelessness, a calmness that encourages imagination and storytelling in a cosy setting. I have always loved mysterious stories, fairy tales and enchantment, not all dark and not all light.

Even in decorating, it is essential to occasionally embrace the dark side, with both imagery and atmosphere, and the colour way that you choose will influence the effect the wallpaper has on your space. The charcoal colour is a direct reflection of the original drawing so that it appears to be sketched on the wall, it can appear calm or dramatic, or as though lifted from a Victorian children’s story book depending on how you look at it. The mist colour way is much calmer and softer, taking on a more ethereal appearance and evoking a sense of discovery, whilst with the forest colour way I wanted to create the feeling of being surrounded by a magical woodland, where nature is abundant and botanical beauty entwines with Gothic undertones.

Drawing Misselthwaite. Photograph: Carmel King

 ‘Misselthwaite’ is printed on a new ECO non-woven wallpaper, that we are one of the first in the UK to use. It is made of 79% renewable resources with the remaining 21% being plant based and is printed at one of the few remaining family run printers in the UK using non-toxic water-based inks.