Category Archives: STYLE NEWS

Russian Romantic painter Ivan Aivazovsky was entranced by the wild, untameable energy of the sea, painting it in bruised blue and purple tones punctuated by white moonlight. ABYSS linen recalls the deepest tones in Aivazovsky’s brooding seascapes, a rich indigo that suggests tempestuous, brewing drama. In the face of nature’s sheer, destructive force Aivazovsky saw…

CORAL linen is a colour filled with heat and fire, burning with the raging intensity of a Spanish sunset. For the deeply passionate painter Joan Miro this red held great significance, both as a patriotic symbol for his native Spain and a potent carrier of raw, overflowing emotion that spills out from his canvases and…

COMPLEXION linen is a rich, fleshy tone, backlit with glowing warmth like the blushing skin of a ripe peach. British painter Lucien Freud infused many of his figurative paintings with this warm pink colour, particularly his male subjects, infusing them with a deeply intense, hot flush of life. On his enduring infatuation with pink and…

There is a light, airy delicacy to DAWN linen, suggesting spring blossom or translucent rose petals blushing pink in the sunlight. It was a colour American artist Georgia O’Keeffe returned to over and over, capturing the pastel toned vibrancy of fresh, new flowers and the dry, parched earth of America’s barren deserts with the same distinctive…

The deep, inky tone of ROYAL PURPLE linen has the warm intensity of a dwindling sunset as the light fades into shadow. This time of day was a favourite with painter Paul Signac, who saw deep purple tones in the shadows around him as the golden sun of his native France began to sink downwards…

ROYAL BLUE linen has the brilliant vibrancy of the Mediterranean Sea as it stretches outwards into an infinite horizon of azure blue. French painter Henri Matisse spent the majority of his life in Nice, where this same limitless blue light filtered into his mind’s eye, to be reimagined on canvas as fields of electrifying ultramarine….

VINEYARD GREEN linen is the colour of energy and growth, suggesting fleshy leaves and dense meadows of wild grass cast into an oasis of cool shade. French Impressionist painter Claude Monet saw the rich, vital potential of this colour, returning to it again and again throughout his career to convey the depth and variety of…

Throughout the Arts and Crafts era a momentous revival of medieval ideas and aesthetics took place, leading to a whole new strand of art and design whose influence continues to be felt today. Led by the writer John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite painters, who championed the social structures and technical skills of medieval artists, the…

From curling leaf tendrils to jagged wildflowers and scrawny weeds, growing forms were prevalent throughout the Arts and Crafts era, which was firmly rooted in nature. Such imagery came to epitomise the movement, which rejected depersonalised industry in favour of the natural and organic, celebrating our deep human need to connect with the natural world….

STRAW linen’s delicate pale gold has the iridescence of sand bleached by the white summer sun. Impressionist painter Joaquin Sorolla saw in this colour the power to recreate searing hot Spanish sunlight as it flooded windswept beaches, flapping ship sails, straw hats and freshly starched clothing in his seemingly endless cycle of summer. When balanced…

The milk-white hue of TADELAKT linen evokes the smooth, polished surfaces of Barbara Hepworth’s ground-breaking and sensuous marble sculptures. A 20th-century woman who both embodied and propelled modernism in Britain, Hepworth revealed her determination and independence early on by travelling alone to Rome in 1924 at the age of 21, after completing her degree at…

The intensity of EARTH linen’s heady, port red mirrors Mark Rothko’s late maroon paintings, in which he captured the brooding half-light of dusk as it slowly shifts and closes into night. Rothko wrote, “Often, towards nightfall, there’s a feeling of mystery, threat, frustration – all of these at once. I would like my paintings to…

“Nothing should be made by man’s labour that is not worth making.” William Morris In this new series we will explore some of the key ideas behind the iconic and hugely influential British Arts and Crafts Movement, a widespread phenomenon of the late 19th and early 20th century that continues to shape the world we…

RED OCHRE linen has the enveloping warmth of terracotta, a rustic colour that seems drawn from the ground like Italian tiles or dry earth parched by the sun. Yet for painter Frank Auerbach this shade of red, along with sandy yellow and burnt orange, reflects the mood and surroundings of his home in London, with…

FROTH linen has the breezy freshness of peach skin in the white spring sunlight, recalling the luminous flesh tones in French master Edouard Manet’s paintings. As a Realist painter Manet made the human figure his central focus, whose pale blush tones become visions of purity and light when set against deep, earthy browns and velvety…