16 Mar The Joy of Printing
Sarah Campbell and Pukka Print’s Juliet Cornell first bonded over the work of Bauhaus artist and textile designer Anni Albers – and when Cornell decided that she wanted to create a collection for her brand’s 10th birthday that was in the spirit of Albers, she asked Campbell to create it. The resulting collection is a joyful ode to the joy of painting and printing.
Campbell is British textile design royalty; as one half of Collier Campbell along with her late sister Susan Collier, her career saw her create hand-painted designs for brands including Jaeger, Conran and Liberty. “I am fascinated by how pattern is such a comforting and reassuring medium,” she explained at a Conversations in Design talk at London Design Week 2023 about how art informs design. Campbell had never worked with block-printing as a medium before (Pukka Print’s specialism) and initially painted straight onto canvas and used potato prints, before using stencils to get a feel for how the finished patterns would work. She said the experience was “lovely and so provoking – it makes you think in new ways.”
The collection was hand-printed in India, and is made up of five patterns across four colour families: library, forest, bright blue and light blue. Design such as ‘Abacus’ (above and below left) demonstrate the genius of Campbell’s work: it may contain only simple semi circles and lines, but it is repeated in a unique rhythm that brings it to life like a piece of music.
“This special collection brings a dynamic new look to Pukka Print – something that will surprise our followers but at the same time won’t feel too disparate – but it also demonstrates our deep knowledge and understanding of hand printing and working in
India,” says Cornell. “We’ve always pushed the technical boundaries when it comes to block printing, so for our tenth birthday collection I wanted to push it aesthetically, and what better person to do that with than a legend in the business?”
Find the collection in the Tissus d’HĂ©lène showroom.