…Overall booths that were inspiring were from some of our favorite brands—including Fendi, Swarovski, Louis Vuitton, Perrier-Jouët, and Gemfields… Swarovski’s dazzling booth drew us in with sparkle and pizazz, first with a wave-like installation of Tord Boontje’s “Light Drops,” and a mural—based on hand-painted artworks—that doubles as bespoke wallpaper by Nick and Rachel Cope, co-founders of Calico Wallpaper.

Our Topographies Collection, made in collaboration with Snarkitecture – of which Daniel Arsham is a partner – in the colorway Winter accents the wall of his study.

Photography by Jason Schmidt

Calico Wallpaper, the Brooklyn-based bespoke wallcoverings company, will make its debut in Paris and London this month, launching collections at Maison&Objet today and the London Design Festival next week.

During the festival (London Design Festival), Calico Wallpaper will introduce its Prism collection at SCP, a leading furniture manufacturer and retailer in the city. The Prism collection features patterns that reimagine the subtle, rainbow-colored reflections created when light diffuses through crystals.

At Maison&Objet, which runs through September 10, Calico Wallpaper is presenting a vastly different wallcovering: Singing Sand. The Collection is part of a mirage-like installation at Triode called Visions / Perceptions, which explores the connection between material realities and optical illusions and will be on view until October 5.

Photography by Charlie Schuck

Suddenly, bold patterns are everywhere. But do they have a place in the modern home? We asked a Brooklyn design writer who knows a thing or two about the dos and dont’s of decor.

Step into any home’s powder room today and chances are good that you’ll encounter bedecked walls that you’ll either find tasteful or tawdry: Wallpaper is back, friends. And it’s not just for trad manses and country-fresh farmhouses. In modern and contemporary spaces–where minimalism once ruled–designers are warming to the idea of wallcoverings, particularly in powder rooms and guests baths.

No less a source than Pinterest has reported a 401 percent increase in searches for “bold print wallpaper” so far this year. It’s the opposite of the reverence for honestly expressed building materials, fetish for Scandinavian simplicity, and preference for paint that has dominated for more than a decade. So, is it sacrilege to ornament architecture with wallpaper? It’s worthy of exploring.

In some cases, wallpaper is practical. Consider historic homes where there are restrictions on radical structural changes–even if they previously underwent disastrous interventions. In my neck of the woods, Brooklyn, there are a number of historic districts with homes plagued by awkward, outdated floor plans and appendages, oddly shaped and tight spaces, or windowless and subgrade dungeons. Architects and designers are modernizing these to a degree, attempting to respect and preserve the original turn-of-the-century design intent. This is where, just like bold paint color, wallpaper can make a huge impact.

…Like paint color or a shift in material palette, wallcoverings can accentuate a nook, create a focal point, or inject character, softness, or a pop of color into a super-minimalist–sometimes too spartan–space. This Manhattan pied-à-terre would resemble any other New York City cookie-cutter abode were it not for a striking headboard wall, courtesy of Calico Wallpaper.

Our Relic Collection in the colorway Tabla was featured in Issue 47 of Gray Magazine

Our Muse Collection in the colorway Coco was featured in Elle Decor NL Magazine’s August/September 2019 print issue

Calico Wallpaper + Toogood

De Nueva York a Londres. A ambos lados del Atlántio se ha creado Muse, la coleccioón de papeles de pared que triunfó en el Salone del Mobile. Muse explora la infinita diversidad y variedad de mujeres, formando un cuadro pictórico de caras con una gran variedad de características, poses y expresiones. Basada en una obra de arte original pintada a mano por Toogood con pinceladas de barrido, la segunda colección de la diseñadora para Calico Wallpaper está inspirada en el concepto de musa femenina, con combinaciones de colores que honran a mujeres icónicas como Marie Curie y Coco Chanel.

Tribeca played host to showroom new (Orior) and new-ish (Viso Project), and a refresh of an already excellent hidden space (Arcade Bakery, with updated lighting by its original designers, Workstead, plus wallpaper by Calico Wallpaper).

Calico Wallpaper x Workstead

Held in the long, slanted building lobby home to Arcade Bakery, Calico installed its new layered Relic wallpaper collection, and Workstead its new Chamber pendants and sconces.

We are excited to share that our latest Relic Collection has been selected as the winner of the Artisanal Wallcovering Product Category for the 2019 NYCxDesign Awards.

7. Arcade

The expansive hallway leading up to the famed Arcade Bakery in Tribeca has been transformed using Calico Wallpaper’s new collection, Relic, and Chamber by Workstead. For the project, the bakery’s train-car like alcoves with fold-down tables implemented by Workstead in 2014 will be enhanced by the luminous new wallcovering as well as the addition of sculptural lighting fixtures by the New York design studio. “Our collaboration is meant to create a design moment that can be enjoyed by all visitors, whether they are regulars at the bakery or stopping by for the first time,” says Nick Cope, cofounder of Calico Wallpaper. Through May 21

Calico Wallpaper and Workstead at Arcade Bakery

Design studio Workstead – known for the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, among other projects – and Calico Wallpaper have created an architecturally inspired installation inside the Neoclassical Merchants Square Building in Tribeca. In the unassuming Arcade Bakery, which nearly blends into the historic building with fold-down tables, Workstead’s Chamber collection of sleek lighting fixtures are mounted against Calico’s new metallic Relic wallpaper. This metal-on-metal aesthetic brings out the richness of Arcade Bakery’s existing space, which, fittingly, Workstead designed in 2014.

May 14-21, Arcade Bakery, 220 Church Street, New York

Brooklyn studios Workstead and Calico Wallpaper have created cosy nooks inside an arcade-cum-cafe in Manhattan to present their latest launches for this year’s NYCxDesign festival.

Calico Wallpaper and Workstead designed the installation to take over Tribeca’s Arcade Bakery – a cafe that Workstead completed in 2014.

Located inside the historic Merchants Square Building, the bakery features a marble-floored corridor with inlays and contours that house fold-down tables for customers to enjoy baked goods.

Within these nooks are Workstead’s latest sconces, alongside new Calico Wallpaper designs.

Arcade by Calico Wallpaper x Workstead
220 Church Street, Lower Manhattan
14-21 May 2019

Calico Wallpaper and design studio Workstead have teamed up to create an immersive installation to showcase their new designs inside Tribeca’s historical Neoclassical Merchants Square Building. The Workstead-designed Arcade Bakery is right next door for tired design-enthusiasts to fuel up on baked goods.

Staged within the historic arcade of the neoclassical Merchant’s Square Building in Tribeca, a harmonious joint effort between Calico Wallpaper and Workstead opens, presenting their latest collections together. The show promises to play to both studios’ individual strengths in the obscure space that also houses Arcade Bakery – a Workstead-designed rest stop for coffee and baked goods.

14-21 May; Arcade Bakery, 220 Church Street, 10013

May 14

“Arcade” at the Merchants Square Building

The Brooklyn-based design firms Workstead and Calico Wallpaper introduce new lighting and wallpaper in a joint lobby installation.

Through May 21 at 220 Church Street

…Elsewhere at Salone, the British designer Faye Toogood collaborated with the Brooklyn-based Calico Wallpaper to create “Muse”, a series of painterly wallcoverings that evoke the nine daughters of Zeus. The paper began life last year when Toogood was invited to temporarily decorated the office of the Italian Vogue editor, Emanuele Farneti. But rather than imagining a clean-edged, intimidating “male” office, Toogood filled the space with her curvy, chubby chairs and clad the wall in a hanging canvas of muses from the magazine’s half century of cover stars.

So successful were these figurative renderings that she revisited them this year, casting everyone from Coco Chanel to Marie Curie as her muse. Not that you could identify them. THere’s a deliberate anonymity to her design. “It doesn’t matter who they are,” says Toogood, “it’s about the symbolism behind them. Muse implies that they’re important. It’s about their strength.”

Such a focus on womanly creativity is not typical of Toogood, who unsurprisingly bristles at being wheeled out as a “female” furniture maker and designer. Her work typically plays with gender, blurring the lines between the sexes. “We don’t have any male muses though,” she observes, “only female.”

It’s worth noting that Toogood gave birth to twin girls in 2017. “I’ve spent the last year and a half being the ultimate mother — it’s been a moment of domestic heaviness,” she continues.

“It amazes me what women can do. Becoming a mother has enabled me to embrace that feminine power, rather than deny it,”

Calico Wallpaper + Faye Toogood’s Muse

From CH favorite Calico Wallpaper and British artist Faye Toogood, the Muse Collection features a non-repeating tableau of iconic women against six different colorways. Based on Toogood’s sweeping, hand-painted works, each wallpaper feels like a timeless rumination on inspiration. Muse is available now.

Still / Life

Three boutique ateliers: bespoke wallpaper company Calico, design studio Ladies & Gentlemen, and Australian ceramics company MUD banded together to create a dreamy exhibition. Featuring Calico Wallpaper’s Muse wallpaper, made in collaboration with artist and designer Faye Toogood, lighting from Ladies & Gentlemen, and earth-hued tableware from MUD, the serene oasis was a moment of calm in the heart of design week.

Forget everything you believed about wallpaper (including mental images of your great aunt’s outdated decor). A new generation of designers is creating fresh, modern designs with endless possibilities.

“There is undoubtedly an excitement surrounding pattern at the moment,” says Nick Cope, who cofounded Calico Wallpaper with his wife, Rachel. “Wallpaper has had certain connotations over the years. However, we are always focused on our mission to elevate wallpaper to high art.”…

Milan 2019 – Calico Wallpaper teamed up with Ladies & Gentlemen Studio and MUD Australia to present STILL LIFE, a peaceful installation in an exquisite Milanese residential courtyard exploring the possibilities that lie between stillness and life.

Calico Wallpaper’s collaboration with Faye Toogood

This is Calico’s second collaboration with Faye Toogood, so clearly it knows it’s onto something great. Muse, the painterly collection of wallpaper, honors iconic women like Marie Curie and Coco Chanel with a combination of sweeping brushstrokes and expressive forms, plus Calico’s digital technologies. Pick a wallpaper (there are different background colors to create a series of six colorways) and the results are essentially custom murals. The collection will be available for purchase soon through Calico Wallpaper’s site.

Faye Toogood x Calico Wallpaper

Aprés avoir collaboré à la première édition de Life in Vogue l’an dernier à Milan, la designeuse britannique Faye Toogood décline cette fois ses illustrations féminines pour Calico Wallpaper à travers une nouvelle collection baptisée Muse. Cette installation mettra également à l’honneur les luminaires de Ladies & Gentlemen Studio et les céramiques de Mud Australia.

Du 9 au 14 avril, via Pietro Maroncelli, 7, Milan

Already known for their dazzling collections that effortlessly elevate wallpaper to high art, Nick and Rachel Cope, the husband-and-wife duo behind Calico Wallpaper, have reached even greater heights at this year’s Milan Design Week. They find a confidante in British design doyenne Faye Toogood by translating her painterly prints of female figures into a breathtaking series neck-and-neck with the Brooklyn-based studio’s career-defining works but with half a decade’s worth of refinement, exploration, and joie de vivre packed into it.

Nick and Rachel Cope, the husband-wife duo behind Calico Wallpaper, translated an original hand-painted artwork by Faye Toogood into a larger-scale love letter to the endless diversity and variety of the female form. Toogood’s sweeping brushstrokes create a painterly tableau of feminine expressions and poses that evoke such iconic muses as Coco Chanel and Marie Curie.

Calico Wallpaper with Faye Toogood
This wallpaper, part of the Muse collection created by British designer Faye Toogood for New York-based Calico Wallpaper, eliminates the need to hang up any art. Viewers can immerse themselves in Toogood’s stunning designs, the colors of which were created with legendary women like Marie Curie and Coco Chanel in mind.

The collaborative work of Calico Wallpaper and Faye Toogood “stretches a few years back,” Calico Wallpaper cofounder Nick Cope tells AD PRO. In 2017, the design house and renowned English designer came together to create a wall-scape inspired by the British Isles landscapes of Toogood’s childhood. While the rest is design history, Nick and Rachel Cope, his partner in work and in life, kept their eyes on Toogood’s continuously evolving designs…

The wallpaper’s title, Muse, took things to the next level. Fittingly, every colorway is named after a women whom Toogood and the Copes all admire. Summing up his own thoughts on the project, Nick notes what an honor it was to work with Toogood, considering the fact that “she’s somewhat of a muse to us as a designer.”

Calico Wallpaper, Ladies & Gentlemen Studio and MUD Australia team up to provide visitors with a rotating series of sensory experiences that invite guests to share a moment of introspection—the perfect mindset to take in MUD’s new collection of minimalist tableware and lighting. Calico will also show off Muse with FayeToogood, a hand-painted collection that celebrates the female form. (Via Pietro Maroncelli 7)

Aura Mani installed at the basement level of the new Casa Perfect in NYC.

Night Slate installed in a Crown Heights Brownstone by BFDO Architects

A Design Gallery to Feel at Home In

On Monday, the influential design gallery the Future Perfect will open Casa Perfect New York, a West Village brownstone furnished with emerging contemporary design — one of the most exciting retail events in the field since Murray Moss opened his namesake store in 1994…

After its success in L.A., the residential retail concept moves into a 5,000-square-foot Italianate brownstone in Manhattan.

7/11
“It’s such an easy room to make such a big impact,” says Leifer. Coombs created a curved countertop to echo the drip detail on the Calico wallpaper, and Leifer commissioned custom gilding by Contraposto for the ceiling and crown molding. Sconces by Waterworks, a faucet by Graff, and a sink basin by Vitraform complete the jewel box conceit.

Our Satori Collection in the colorway Echo was installed in the bathroom makeover of William Randolph Hearst’s New York Penthouse by Bennett Leifer Interiors.

Photography by Stephen Kent Johnson

Our Oceania Collection in the color way ‘Siren‘ installed as a backsplash in this kitchen

The Calico process combines artisanal methods with decorative arts, such as traditional marbling and dip-dying techniques, with innovative digital technologies. Calico Wallpaper collaborates with important designers and architects. In addition to residential projects, Calico Wallpaper designs have been exhibited internationally at the London Design Festival (2015 and 2017), at the Milan Furniture Fair (2015 and 2017), and have won a place in the permanent collection at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

…Another collaboration, this time between Calico Wallpaper and designer Philippe Malouin who presented The Color and the Shape. Inspired by Henri Matisse’s cutouts, the interactive installation included oversized shapes that take collage to a large scale.