Rocking Papers

I absolutely adore the work of London's Tracy Kendall.  She consistently offers some of the most brilliantly conceptual wallpapers I've ever seen.  This isn't even just wallpaper, it's like do-it-yourself Installation Art.  It's very unfortunate, because she had a whole write-up in my first year's coverage of the ICFF, but I'd gotten carried away with the length, and hers ended up getting cut at the last minute.  She deserved to be in there, though.

She told me "Pleats" is new this year:

She's had similarly textured papers before, but this one in vertical strips has a bit more orderly texture, and I've not seen any of them in metallic foil before, either.

Kendall has done a lot of amazing thing with stitching into her papers, but her "Stitched" ones go well beyond that.  They're pretty much fully embroidered:

That's exquisite, from a visual standpoint at the very least.

I believe this "Flocked Text" is somewhat new, also:

Utterly classy.  The text is phrases of Shakespeare.

But my favorite is "Stitched Text."  This one completely blew my mind:

It's A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Kendall really likes her sister's handwriting, so she asked her sister to write out a bunch of lines from the play.  The handwritten lines of Shakespeare are embroidered into the wallpaper.  Holy crap that's freaking awesome.  And once again, I love the idea of the words of a 500-year-old play being dealt with in a way that would not be possible without the very latest computer technology.  But it's historic and futuristic, formal and casual, graphic and thought-provoking, all at the same time.  I just love it.

Tracy Kendall Wallpaper

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©2008, Ryan Witte