How I created my Beastly Chronicles Wallpaper
It started with a love of stories
… in particular the Edwardian short stories of Saki (H.H. Munro). I’d envisaged a storyboard of scenes from Sredni Vashtar, hanging as a wallpaper border, to be read horizontally as you moved around the room.
Here’s a screenprint of the short story in 12 parts.
Went on some research trips…
Quite obsessed with Saki I then found the North Devon house he’d lived in as a child with his oppressive grandmother and two aunts. I really wanted to see it - having read in Sandie Byrne’s brilliant biography - how much his childhood experiences here shaped his stories.
The house was between owners, so I had little snoop in the garden, sketched and took lots of photos.
This 1858 photo shows how the house would have looked when Saki was sent from Burma to live there in 1872. It’s now split into two properties.
Designed a scene of intertwined stories…
Using a scalpel, scissors and lots of black paper, I created characters, creatures and landscapes from seven of Saki’s tales: Esme the hyena and the fateful car; a prowling Gabriel-Ernest; Pan and the stag from The Music on the Hill; Martha feeding the poultry in The Cobweb, Tobermory strolling in the garden; the humming birds, parrots, pigs, wolf and horribly good little girl in The Storyteller and then most important of all, the house itself, which undoubtedly inspired Sredni Vashtar.
Printed wallpaper on TV, badly…
Kirstie Allsopp was looking for local Devon-based artists to help decorate her North Devon property, Meadowgate as part of her 2008 Channel Four series, Kirstie’s Homemade Home.
She came and printed wallpaper with me at Double Elephant in Exeter. I can’t watch it! The workshop didn’t have a proper screenprint studio then so Kirstie and I are printing sideways; using a screen with a mesh designed for fabric (so way too much ink is printed); the heat from the crew’s lights dried the ink on the screen … .this is NOT how you print wallpaper!
…but Kirstie and the team were great, it got me exposure when the programme broadcast and orders started to come in!!
Outsourced the printing to Anstey Wallpaper
Handprinting wallpaper is a real skill and I didn’t have the studio space, equipment or time to manage this. It also means the wallpaper becomes really expensive per roll.
So I visited Anstey Wallpaper in Loughborough and looked at all their wallpaper printing processes (they even have William Morris wooden blocks). I chose rotary screenprinting (pictured) to manufacture this design - a cylinder, it’s faster than flatbed screenprinting but still has the beautiful precise ink-on-paper sharp screenprint quality. It also meant I could also sell it more affordably.
I wish I’d taken photos as I walked around the factory. They are absolute masters of all stage of wallpaper production from paper quality, pigment mixing, printing and packaging.
Chose colourways and ways to sell it…
I tried out lots of colours and settled on three colourways - charcoal, yellow and silver. I sell the wallpaper through my website and via online interior design stores and designers. It’s probably shipped to the USA more than any other country!
I’ve exhibited it alongside my prints in galleries too. One primary school teacher took some samples for her class and sent me back all the stories her pupils had created themselves from the scenes!
It makes my day when customers share photos of the paper in their homes. I love seeing how it transforms each space. What’s even lovelier is when they get in touch to re-order when they move house!
I returned to Saki’s house
“Their home was near Barnstaple, a lonely house in a garden shut in by high stone walls with meadows beyond… He loved above all, the woodlands and the wild things in them”
Rothay Reynolds, Journalist and Saki’s friend
Seven years after I designed the wallpaper I returned to Saki’s house. This time we went inside!
The new owners invited me to visit while it was being renovated. Walking around the large house I thought of the young H. H. Munro and his wild imagination, confined to these rooms.
My son came with me. The same age as Hector when he was sent to live here with his two puritanical aunts.
Beastly Chronicles on your walls?…
You can buy my wallpaper and samples through my online shop here.
Each roll is £85 and 10 metres long.
The repeat 32cm half drop
The roll is 68.6cm wide (wider than a normal 52cm wallpaper)
This document will help you calculate how many rolls you’ll need for your space or there are lots of online calculators which do the maths for you!