CHARLOTTE JOHNSTONE FOR SOANE BRITAIN
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CHARLOTTE JOHNSTONE FOR SOANE BRITAIN
This spring, Soane Britain has collaborated with the English artist Charlotte Johnstone on two painterly designs depicting flowers and insects. While best known for her portraiture, fabrics fit naturally into the narrative of Charlotte’s work, where the pattern of a chair’s upholstery or the drape of a dress tells the sitter’s story just as the face and hands do. Trained at the Slade School of Fine Art, Charlotte is deeply influenced by her own travels and experiences, as well as her family’s historic artistic roots. Her grandmother and great aunt Doris and Anna Zinkeisen were both distinguished artists and designers and worked together to paint a one-thousand-foot mural for the Queen Mary ship in 1934, which by happy coincidence was also home to some of the Angraves rattan designs now held in the Soane archive. Charlotte’s original designs are instilled with her great interest in gardens and pollinators and draw upon a decade spent living in India. Initially inspired by south-east Asian fabrics in Soane’s textile archive, Charlotte made numerous studies in pencil and watercolour, reimagining various botanical elements. Both patterns she has designed for Soane are distinguished by their painterly quality and have been faithfully replicated by expert printers in Britain to retain all the distinct characteristics of her original artworks: ‘Patanga’, a vividly patterned linen evoking tropical forests with rambling flowers and exotic moths, and ‘Mawar’, a more disciplined scroll of flowers, a pared back reference to 17th-century Chinese wallpapers.
The Rattan Ant
tibes Wall Light
CHARLOTTE JOHNSTONE - FABRICS & WALLPAPERS
Charlotte Johnstone - Patanga Azure
Charlotte Johnstone - Patanga Ivy
Charlotte Johnstone - Patanga Moss
Charlotte Johnstone - Patanga Yellow
Charlotte Johnstone - Mawar Wallpaper Chestnut
Charlotte Johnstone - Mawar Wallpaper Gold
Charlotte Johnstone - Mawar Wallpaper Ivory on Hart Green
Charlotte Johnstone - Mawar Wallpaper Ivory on Jasper Blue
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www.soane.com/charlotte-johnstone
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NEW SOANE DESIGNS
Alongside the collaboration with Charlotte, Soane is also adding several new designs to its own fabric collections. For the first time it is an English archival design that has inspired a Soane floral chintz, rather than a hand-drawn document painted in India’s Coromandel Coast, and ‘Roses’ does feel entirely English, being a faithful copy of a late 18th-century glazed cotton, spilling over with blousy flowers associated with an English herbaceous border. The timeless ‘Reynolds Stripe’ weave, meanwhile, recalls a more elegantly austere form of 18th-century design. These patterns join the romantically diaphanous ‘Papyrus’ weave, the perfect neutral fabric for lightening up a room.
Roses - Ambrosia
Roses - Damask
Roses - Munstead
Reynolds Stripe - Dove
Reynolds Stripe - Duck Egg Blue
Reynolds Stripe - Sepia
Papyrus - Ivory
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Spring also sees the launch of new versions of much-loved favourites: Sophie Coryndon’s ‘Wilton Vine’ now on a linen base and fresh new green colourways for ‘Scrolling Acanthus’ and ‘Corded Stripe.’
Corded Stripe - Emerald
Scrolling Acanthus - Green
Sophie Coryndon - Wilton Vine Azure
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A pair of favourite side tables, the ‘Rattan Osiris Side Table’ and the ‘Dryad Rattan Leighton Table’, now have lower siblings and the ‘Rattan Hurlingham Column Bookcase’ also takes on a new more compact form, with a single column of shelves. The ‘Rattan Upholstered Venus Stool’, on the other hand, gains height with a new countertop edition. The ‘Rattan Walpole Mirror’ is influenced by the distinctive silhouettes in Horace Walpole’s house at Strawberry Hill.
The Dryad ® Rattan Leighton Side Table - Low
The Rattan Osiris Side Table Low
The Rattan Hurlingham Column Bookcase
The Rattan Upholstered Venus Counter Height Stool
The Rattan Walpole Mirror
www.soane.com
New designs also include the ‘Rattan Neith Tables’ configured to work as dining, centre and side tables. Re-worked in rattan, their form is loosely inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement’s spiderweb silhouettes. As with all Soane’s rattan designs they are made at its own Leicestershire workshop.
The Rattan Neith Centre Table
The Rattan Neith Dining Table
The Rattan Neith Side Table
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The ‘Double Rise and Fall Ceiling Light’ is joined by the lighter ‘Single Rise and Fall’, which is supremely practical, requiring only a light touch to adjust the shade height. Engineered by craftsmen on England’s South Coast, the brass dome detail is precisely counterweighted, depending on whether a card, gathered, rattan or vellum shade is selected.
The Single Rise and Fall Ceiling Light - with Card Shade
The Single Rise and Fall Ceiling Light - with Gathered Shade
The Single Rise and Fall Ceiling Light - with Rattan Shade
The Single Rise and Fall Ceiling Light - with Vellum Shade
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New versions of The Hexagonal Table and Wave Mirror also join the collection, with their natural timber finishes honouring the techniques and craftsmanship behind the designs. The Hexagonal Table is hand carved by craftsmen in Soane’s own workshop in Dorset, while the Wave Mirror is created from start to finish by one craftsman in a workshop in Suffolk. Its three-dimensional form is exceptionally challenging to achieve.
The Hexagonal Table - Small
The Hexagonal Table - Large
The Wave Mirror - Small
The Wave Mirror - Medium
The Wave Mirror - Large
www.soane.com
www.soane.com