Nature is at the center of a new digital exhibition staged by Alice Liechtenstein at Schloss Hollenegg.

When Italian design curator Alice LIechtenstein moved with her family in 2014 to Schloss Hollenegg, a rambling 12th-century castle in Austria that was her husband’s ancestral home, she was confronted with something new: nature. Not the idyllic, wildflowers-from-my-country-house kind of nature. It was something messier, less romantic, a little out of control…

design firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero and Calico Wallpaper brought those vines and insects that had once so maddened Liechtenstein inside in the form of a fanciful printed wallpaper, derived from an oil painting.

“We wanted to distort the distinction between the decorated interior and the wilderness beyond,” Adam Charlap Hyman explains, “while referencing the presence of numerous historical landscape wallpapers throughout the castle.”

The collaboration between Charlap Hyman & Herrero and Calico Wallpaper yielded Overgrow. This colorway installed at Schloss Hollenegg isAlice, named after the Italian design curator.

The Inverted Spaces Collection in the colorway Orion is shown in this article.

Nick Cope, co-founder of Calico Wallpaper + Cope with Rachel Cope

On navigating the disruption-
These times are certainly unusual, fortunately, due to many of the digital systems we have in place we were able to move to remote work fairly quickly and seamlessly (good wallpaper pun!). Rachel and I are upstate at our house in Hudson because our kids are out of school and this affords them a lot more room to run around. Of course, we are having to share duties spending time with the kids so our combined work output is a little reduced at the moment.

On making business changes-
The business is humming along and we are still designing, sampling, printing, and taking orders without much change at all. Our team has been excellent in handling these sudden changes heroically! We are so grateful that they are working hard to keep the company vision moving forward.

On reimagining their business-
The sudden change has reminded me how fragile we all are in this complex ecosystem. Rachel and I have begun to discuss new goals and milestones for our business and although these are private at the moment, we hope to unveil new initiatives soon.

On what they’re experiencing personally + professionally-
I feel like my life has done a bit of a 180 in the last month! Rachel and I are in a unique situation too because we are both partners in business and life. We are trying to balance these rapid personal and professional changes without friction and I feel like we have been doing a good job. I would say that it is nice to be upstate with a view of the Catskills out my window, however, I am pretty much glued to my computer at the moment and I miss the interactions with the team or even little trips to the cafe for a break.

On staying positive-
Taking walks and spending time with the kids has been the best way to stay positive. Obviously, Tiger King on Netflix has made all the difference too.

On hope for the future-
At the moment, I am just hoping for the other side to become clear. There may be some significant lasting impacts to this crisis and hopefully some of them are positive. For instance, attention to health insurance in the United States must become a priority. The system is totally nonsensical and should have been nationalized a century ago like much of the industrialized world. Also, climate change is another crisis that will be an increasingly disruptive force in our lifetime so maybe this crisis will remind us that it is time to act.

10. Available in six colorways, Calico Wallpaper’s Escape reflects how glaciers carve new forms into the Earth’s surface by carrying traces from the past.

The Escape Collection in the colorway Andes is featured in Hospitality Design’s February 2020 issue.

… Expect to see more product launches during the new stay-at-home reality… For product debuts originally timed to NYCxDesign, Calico Wallpaper is pursuing digital announcements and storytelling instead.

Photography by Adam Ryder & Matthew Johnson

Peek inside some of our favorite designers’ home offices, and get their tips for creating a successful WFH setup (or mindset) of your own.

Because we could all use a little home-office inspiration right now, we asked some of our favorite creatives to share their own shelter-in-place work spaces. Plus, we rounded up their tips and takeaways for making the best of working from home — even if that means getting the job done from your kitchen table.

Photography by Nick Cope

Giant waves were lashing against the side of the apartment building. Just outside the living room window, an electrical transformer exploded, sending sparks flying. Inside, Nick and Rachel Cope were starting a wallpaper company.

It was 2012, and Hurricane Sandy was laying waste to New York’s low-lying neighborhoods, including Red Hook, Brooklyn, where the young couple were hunkered down. In the aftermath of the storm, most of Nick’s projects—he had a design-build company at the time—were put on hold, and the hospital where Rachel was working as a therapist was shut down for post-Sandy repairs. So the Copes took advantage of the break to experiment with making marbled paper, a project that evolved over time into a bustling company, Calico Wallpaper.

Almost a decade later, they’re facing another disaster-induced hiatus, with their Brooklyn design studio closed by stay-at-home orders issued to halt the spread of COVID-19. This time around, the Copes have a staff of 11, not to mention two young children at home—the stakes are different. “Sandy was awful, but it was fairly localized and we did see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Nick tells Business of Home. “We’re taking some of that experience into this, but this situation is obviously different.”

The company is facing a heap of challenges—a creative team learning how to work over Zoom, a design director stranded in South Africa with a wonky laptop—but in many ways, the Copes are lucky. The mills that manufacture their wallpaper are currently operating, placing them into the fortunate category of vendors who can still ship product. Across the country, many makers are facing a more complete shutdown, putting a famously industrious community into uncharted territory: downtime…

Photography by Daniel Shea

Through all of the uncertainty and stress that COVID-19 pandemic is causing around the world, the interior design community continues to rise to the occasion in amazing ways. Online retails are donating part of their proceeds to charity; PR firms and interior designers are raising money via Instagram initiatives; and now the design studio General Assembly has partnered with 40 members of the New York City design community to host the online auction At Home, which will be live through April 12, with all net proceeds going to the humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief. The auction’s stellar lineup includes pieces by Anna Karlin, Apparatus, Egg Collective, Kinder Modern, and the Future Perfect, just to name a few. See more of our favorite pieces going up for sale below, and don’t forget to bid — this is one auction you won’t want to miss.

9. Well Wallpaper

This ombré wallcovering by Calico would add contrast to just about any wall. Now’s the time to update your home!

Our Aurora Collection in the colorway Well was up for bid and shown above.

Now that we are all looking into each other’s homes on FaceTime and Zoom, it’s time to rethink wallpaper — and not the virtual kind.

The wallpaper business was booming before coronavirus forced us all to contemplate the state of the walls in our home-and in the home of everyone else on our virtual meeting. Those in the industry are taking notice: “We’ve seen a big spike in wallpaper sample orders,” says Noel Fahden, vice president of merchandising at online retailer Chairish. “Many customers are ordering five-plus samples at a time, so they’re clearly considering a range of options.”…

Florals  – Status brand Calico Wallpaper, meanwhile, has produced a couple of more subtle flower-inspired patterns, including Flora which evokes “the eternal calm and serenity of an open field.”

Our Flora Collection in the colorway Wildflower is featured in this article.

“…To David Alhadeff, founder of the influential design gallery The Future Perfect, the rise in eclecticism has to do with broader changes in design itself. He recently opened the third installment of Casa Perfect, a nomadic design gallery that takes over an entire house. The current iteration is in a mid-century modern home in Los Angeles and features an eclectic mix of work: Matthew Day Jackson’s hand-sculpted tables and chairs; Chris Wolston’s anthropomorphic wicker furniture and prismatic botanical lighting; Calico Wallpaper’s gilded wallcovering; and Seungjin Yang’s playful blown-glass seating.”

The Aura Collection in the colorway Svad is featured as an accent wall in the Beverly Hills The Future Perfect Showroom.

Our collaboration with British designer Faye Toogood – Woodlands Fields, Moors is featured in the March 2020 issue of Salon Magazin. The colorway Moors is featured in the print issue.

For its fourth installment, Casa Perfect takes over a 1970s Trousdale Estates home, designed by Raul F Garduno. Casa Perfect – the nomadic showhouse concept of The Future Perfect gallery – has an unprecedented relationship with the architecture it inhabits. Previous iteration in Los Angeles saw installations in the former home of Elvis Presley and at the David Hyun designed century house in the Hollywood Hills. Similarly, for its first New York outing in 2019, Casa Perfect opened the doors of a West Village five-story townhouse designed by David Chipperfield…

Calico Wallpaper’s Aura Collection in the colorway Svad makes a grand splash behind the dining area in the new iteration of the Los Angeles based home/showroom.

… Another easy update that has added a lot of joy to the apartment is the Calico Wallpaper. “I was inspired by the brand, so I went to their office and loved everything,” says Isabella. “In one room it looks like the surface of the moon (Lunaris in the colorway Midnight) and in the guest bedroom it’s this amazing ombré sunset (Aurora in the colorway Ray).”

Photography by Paola + Murray

“You walk into something like this, and you see a Jacuzzi tub like that, and you’re having a hard time peeling your chin off the floor,” he says, gesturing toward the sunken-tiled Roman tub in the master bathroom, now surrounded by gold-leaf Calico wallpaper and wall-to-wall carpet that is not original to the house, yet serendipitously fits right in with the original popcorn ceilings, seagrass wall treatment, and vertical blinds. “The house is really sexy, and it was a beautiful tableau to bring ourselves into.” Call it Boogie Nights chic.”

Photography by Douglas Friedman

A walk up the pathway to LA’s new Casa Perfect—an architecturally stunning showroom for art and design gallery The Future Perfect—hints at what will be inside. Lush foliage, with both California and Japanese influences, leads to a massive ’70s-style front door, crafted from elegant dark wood. Push one of the large vertical handles forward to step inside an expansive living room with soft carpet underfoot. Wonder unfolds…

Calico Wallpaper’s Aura Collection in the colorway Svad makes a grand splash behind the dining area in the new iteration of the Los Angeles based home/showroom.

The Future Perfect’s blue-chip designers to showcase their latest work in a dynamic, lived-in environment that conjures much more excitement than the typical white cube. For this iteration, the gallery’s third in Los Angeles, Alhadeff selected a historic residence designed in 1971 by a mid-century powerhouse Raul F. Garduno in Trousdale Estates, a picturesque neighborhood located at the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountain. Our Aura wallpaper in the colorway Svad is featured in the dining area, in good company with Kolho Table and Chairs by our friend Matthew Day Jackson and a Maxhedron Chandelier by the Bec Brittain.

Photography by Douglas Friedman

Happy new year, everyone! This year is going to be a good one, we can feel it. To start things off on the right foot with our Designer Desktop column, especially after the holiday craze, we’re bringing some zen into your life with this tranquil Escape wallpaper designed by Calico Wallpaper in collaboration with artist and sculptor Fernando Mastrangelo. Available in six color ways, the collection features an illustration of the glacial movements that shape landscapes. Paired with a fitting quote by Georgia O’Keefe, these wallpapers are truly lovely to see when you open up your laptop or pick up your phone.

Calico Wallpaper had two launches at the fair — a Beverly Hills Hotel-inspired banana leaf pattern backdropping Swarovski’s booth and this collaboration in the collector’s lounge with Fernando Mastrangelo, which riffs on the designer’s layered sand aesthetic and reflects how glacial movement can shape landscapes.

The Escape Collection in the colorways Arctic, Matterhorn, and Perito are featured in Sight Unseen’s Best Of Design Miami 2019

Calico Wallpaper launched a new bespoke wallpaper based off of this booth collaboration with Swarovski, which celebrates the company’s commitment to sustainability.

Swarovski returns to Design Miami/ with a biophilic installation that features two lustrous lighting installations by long-standing creative partner Tord Boontje, Atelier Swarovski home decor, and nature-inspired jewelry. Backdropping the booth is the Austrian crystal purveyor’s debut collaboration with Calico Wallpaper founders Nick and Rachel Cope, who created a pattern of oversize banana leaves based on hand-painted artworks.

Swarovski has created its booth at Design Miami inspired by water and nature. Tord Boontje has carefully designed the lighting installations which will be paired with wallpaper from Calico Wallpaper. Both embrace the nature preservation theme while Conservation International showcases films at the booth. The main attraction, Swarovski, will be displaying Atelier Swarovski’s home decor, fashion jewelry, and fine jewelry. After taking their total energy usage down 29%, helping provide clean water in schools, and committing to responsible ways of business, the brand wants to celebrate the importance of our planet…

At the booth, hundreds of light drops will be hanging in the first room followed by blossom chandeliers in the second. The wallpaper will also be separated into two ideas. The first is a custom dark blue, Swarovski’s signature color (this is a custom colorway of Calico Wallpaper’s Sumi Collection). The second will be large banana leaves hand-painted in a dark green (this is from Calico Wallpaper’s Paradiso Collection).

Photography by Happy Monday

…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.

Our Aurora Heaven wallpaper was featured in the Kitchen Issue of Corriere della Sera – Living magazine.

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