Charlotte Johnstone for Soane Britain

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, drawing inspiration from 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 incarnations 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

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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