She has channelled her storytelling magic into the children’s bedrooms on the top floor. To this already heady mix she has added graphic, geometric rugs, a terrazzo floor in shades of candy pink and yellow to suit the flamingo scenes splashed across the master bathroom walls, and Carlo Scarpa-style smoky Murano wall lights. “I tried to do grey in the kitchen, but it still ended up a kind of purple,” Gurney says. I want them to be full of stuff, as if I’m cocooned all the time.”Ī warm, cosseting palette of pinks, reds, oranges and yellows washes through the London house. For hours I studied the Chinese industrial and pastoral scenes on the paper lining the walls every time I would see different things.” The result is that she has created rooms “that never feel simple and empty. Her childhood was spent “sitting on the stairs when my parents were having parties, but not being allowed downstairs. “I’m used to things being very layered,” she says. Every surface is layered with embellishment, from hand-embroidered silk wallpaper in a swirl of metallic stitches and pleated Indian fabric lightshades to the tops of wooden side cabinets painted with a faux marble effect. “I wanted it to feel rich and cosy, especially when it often feels cold and grey outside.” It shouldn’t work, but it does, to dramatic, dazzling effect. A lot!” says Gurney, the head of global marketing and development at De Gournay. “I want my eye to be stimulated by colour and pattern. And people can’t steal it easily! It beats having diamonds in the drawer or diamonds in the bank, where you can’t look at them at all." We'll second that.In her eyes more is definitely more. "So, on the assumption that you get the best wallpaper and you install it properly and you look after it properly, you have got quite a valuable asset in the long run. "If you go to Christie's or Sotheby's and you buy an 18th-century set of panels, you’ll pay something like half a million dollars for them," he says. It’s very pure."Ĭraftsmanship and customization aside, put simply, the wallpaper can be a sound investment, as Gurney is quick to point out. "We do more Chinese traditional painting now as opposed to looking at those reinterpretations. "Chinoiserie was the 18th-century European interpretation of the Chinese technique, and a lot of it was painted not by Chinese but by European people," adds Gurney. "In the past ten to 20 years we've begun to produce really authentic reproductions of the original papers, including ones with antiquing to look as though they have been repaired," says Gracie. The past few years, though, have marked a return to more traditional aesthetics for both Gracie and de Gournay. Throughout his career at the company, trends have run from more crisp designs to muted hues to wildly bold colors. Gracie estimates that anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of its work is customized, an option that provides a window into changing styles and preferences. "We do a lot of custom work that people would look at and and never guess is de Gournay," says Gurney, citing more contemporary patterns the company has done for the likes of Kelly Wearstler. Gracie and de Gournay also offer infinite possibilities for customization. It seems like people are more interested in a custom-tailored experience, so we’re all learning that we need to be able to offer that."Ī customized de Gournay design. "I think it's becoming more popular, too. Venson explains that he approaches custom projects as "three-dimensional paintings." "Doing something by hand is such a pleasure because you really get to work with the space," he says. "We start with scale drawings, and then we map all the panels and label them. "We all paint aspects of it, and then I do the delicate painting at the end." All of Venson's painting is done on a Chinese watercolor paper, which he feels takes the color best. "We turn the studio into a conveyor belt," says Venson. With the exception of its setting (in Venson's New York studio, instead of one in China), his technique is quite similar to that of the Chinese artists. "It looks fabulous because it so fits the space." Venson has earned a devoted following for his contemporary take on the age-old process, riffing on classic chinoiserie designs to create whimsical patterns of his own imagining. "When you do a custom paper, it fits perfectly, like a custom suit," says George Venson, founder of Voutsa. Of course, one of the most compelling reasons for outfitting a space in hand-painted paper (and one of the ways in which the practice does indeed align with current consumer trends) is the room for customization. Voutsa's Menagerie hand-painted paper installed in a dining room.
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