Viva Brighton April 2015 Issue #26

design
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Fiona Howard
‘You can smell my work’
“Venice Beach is absolutely bonkers,” says textile
designer Fiona Howard, who is almost as at home
in Los Angeles as Hove. “…It’s a bit like Brighton,
but in America.”
Fiona, who grew up in Sussex, now divides her
time between the two cities. Over 27 years she has
worked for many of the biggest names in interiors.
Her US clients include Crate & Barrel, while in the
UK her best-known pattern is Sanderson’s ‘Dandelion
Clocks’. The design is sold so prolifically
they reprint it in batches of 5,000 metres at a time,
licensed for everything from rugs and lampshades
to stationery and ceramics.
“I think it kept [Sanderson] going through the
recession,” says Fiona jovially. “They’ve made so
much money out of that design - it’s taken on a life
of its own. The design was chosen from Fiona’s
portfolio in 2006 for a flat fee. “It hit the mid-century
theme just at the beginning,” she says. “I don’t
think I saw it coming.”
Sanderson, the company that brought William Morris
to so many front rooms, seems to have cropped
up again and again in Fiona’s life. She grew up
surrounded by Morris fabrics and wallpapers – “it
was the seventies” – and she recalls visiting their print
rooms as a student, admiring original Morris wood
blocks she later learnt had been thrown in a skip.
Ironically, Fiona passed up a student work placement
with Sanderson. It’s still a huge regret. “I
thought, ‘it’s my summer holidays, why would I
want to give up two weeks and not be paid?’ how
stupid could I have been?”
I can’t help but think Fiona probably got the best
deal. She continues to work with Sanderson, her
name displayed proudly on the selvedge of ‘Maple’,
a design that mimics the clean lines and colourful
blocks of fifties home furnishings. As well, she has
the freedom to pursue her own brand, which she
says will soon be launched Stateside.
Much of Fiona’s work is informed by organic shapes
that catch her eye in gardens, books, or objects
found in flea markets: “I’m always drawing,” she
says. “William Morris’s designs flow together so
beautifully. The structure is amazing: he gets all the
elements worked out. That’s something I try to do:
work out a structure before I fill it in with leaves,
flowers or birds. I pick things up wherever I go, lay
them out and try to make some sense of them… I
colour all of my papers by hand and leave them to
dry all over the kitchen floor.”
Fiona’s designs are finished using techniques including
monoprint, lino and paper cutting. She feels fortunate
to have learnt these skills before the digital
takeover, which for her seems “a little bit soulless.”
“You can smell my work - it’s the oil paint and
handmade papers. My clients ask, ‘how did you do
that?’ because they don’t often see the lovely handcrafted
traditional way of designing anymore. I’m so
pleased I stuck with it; I get so much pleasure out of
it.” Chloë King www.fionahoward.com
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