Victoria Larson, founder of the eponymous wallpaper brand, joins us this week to discuss the creative process behind three of her timeless designs, Cowrie, Eddy and Running Tide. Drawing inspiration from nature, each pattern is hand painted, then printed on fine materials in collaboration with US craftsmen.
Raymond Paul Schneider: When did you first start to develop this new collection?
Victoria Larson: Mid-2021, although the ideas for these patterns have been in my head and in my painting for some time.
RPS: What was your initial inspiration, and where did the idea(s) come from?
VL: Cowrie is inspired by ferns. I never really paid attention to ferns here but fell in love with their structure when I lived in New Zealand. There I spent a lot of time hiking the gorgeous landscape, often walking through whole forests of fern. It’s magical to see them slowly unfurl into the soft, leafy final shapes.
Eddy is informed by the play of light and wind on the water. Like cloud watching, you can read so many shapes and motifs into the patterns. I grew up on the water and have always been drawn to it. In Eddy, I tried to capture the changeability of water, both movement and calm.
Running Tide is a fairly literal observation of the movement of a fast tide near where I live in Maryland.
RPS: Please describe your overall creative and design process.
VL: Anything and everything sparks new design ideas for me but I usually gravitate toward nature. I’ve traveled with little watercolor sets and sketchbooks for many years, documenting places and ideas. I keep one at my desk too and it’s where I sketch out initial designs. To start the actual process, I typically dig through my collection of sketchbooks and archived work. I purposefully avoid social media while I’m designing so I can’t be influenced by what I see.
Once I can translate that idea into something on paper, I scan it, print, work back into it and refine. This part of the process is very fluid for me – a back-and-forth of how the design fits together and tells the story. Then it gets refined again in photoshop and I create the various colorways.
I intentionally don’t clean the original watercolor too much so that the final design still shows my hand. I think this is the magic of watercolor; the imperfections are what give the medium the power to suggest instead of inform. It lets the viewer fill in their feelings and stories to connect with the art.
RPS: Please describe the methods, tools, and materials you used to develop and prototype this design?
VL: I always start with a hand sketch, a thought process left over from my interior design training. Watercolor is my go-to, but a pen or pencil is fine if that’s all that’s handy. I will sketch on anything including my daily planner! I especially like watercolor for its softness and imperfections. That’s what gives my wallpaper soul. You can see that it was painted by hand. That’s also why I print these papers digitally, to retain the original painterly feel. In fact, the heavy matte wallpaper I print on looks and feels like watercolor paper which really makes the end product feel like a wall of art instead of just decor.
RPS: Please describe any challenges that affected the design and perhaps steered you to an entirely new final design?
VL: Cowrie actually started as an ink sketch of furling ferns captured during my time spent in New Zealand. I felt like it had potential but might look better as a block print so I carved a block and text printed. I was getting closer but the design still didn’t have the feel that I wanted. After a trip to Australia, I came home inspired by the aboriginal dot painting style and thought I’d try a similar look for the fern sketch which ended up becoming the Cowrie design you see today. The final design is a completely different one from where I started. I love that people see different things in the design – some see shells, some ferns, and others just a delicate pattern. That’s when I feel I’ve done my best design when people each see their own influences and can’t quite put their finger on the motif.
RPS: Describe your overall brand DNA and Ethos
VL: My mission is to create wallpaper with soul, style and approachability that conjures up the homeowner’s favorite memories. To offer a heritage product that is not only timeless in design but made to last the test of time using the finest papers. To make the designer’s job easier by offering quick delivery times, lots of communication and easy installation.
Click here to see more of our “Anatomy of a Design” series.
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