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Champions of Craft: Calico Wallpaper

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Mohawk
Photography
Calico Wallpaper
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As we continue to celebrate the influence of art and design on perception with the Mohawk Maker Quarterly, we’re taking a closer look at the group of talented makers featured in issue six. Today we follow up with Rachel and Nick Cope, of Calico Wallpaper, a design studio that specializes in gilded, metallic and marble wallpapers and bespoken wall murals.

This issue of the Mohawk Maker Quarterly focuses on Impressions: The kind we strive to leave on our peers, customers, influencers, culture and history. What kind of impression do you want to leave behind?

As designers and artists, we would like our work to create an experience for anyone who encounters a wall covered in Calico Wallpaper. Of course timelessness is an honorable goal, however, one that is implausible and somewhat hypocritical.

We would rather hope that our product moves our audience here-and-now, perhaps creating a moment of wonder and awe. Perhaps in 100 years, our paper may continue to hang on a few special walls…that would nice.

Since our murals are customized for every space, it truly is a different experience when confronting each installation and we hope that this specialness is absorbed by the viewer. Perhaps it is this idea of utilizing no techniques in design and production that might be adopted by future wallpaper designers enabling more specialized and unique products available on demand.

To what would you attribute the timeless character of your work?

We owe the timelessness in our work to the beautiful tradition of paper marbling which has spanned the globe for centuries. The inspiration for our inaugural patterns is inspired by methods that were mastered in Turkey and passed on by manuscript and oral tradition.

‘Ebru’, a Persian derivation known in English as ‘cloud painting’, is inspired by a certain impression made cumulus cloud formations. This is a fairly great starting point when striving for a timeless aesthetic – there is simply so much history behind these motifs, perhaps there is a bit of paper marbling in the collective unconsciousness at this point.

We all have seen a scrap in the bottom of a drawer or inside the cover of an old book – so there is a familiar quality that feels antique. It is from this stable foundation that we jump off to create our product. There is, of course, the addition of advanced technology for custom printing that ironically further supports the handmade feeling of our product by increasing scale and forcing the viewer to see and identify these elegant designs up close.

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What characteristics tend to capture your attention? Why do these traits stand out to you?

When designing, we are quite mindful of creating an immersive environment. Rather than sticking to standard rolls and repeating patterns, we like the engagement with that non-repeating custom murals present. Although this offering can sometimes bring challenges, we embrace them and feel they afford us more flexibility in creating dynamic installation; one that creates a more visceral experience for the viewer, who becomes surrounded by our design. Every inch of the artwork is different so it forces participation to examine and appreciate the visual complexity of the mural.

Someone once said to us that “Calico is wallpaper raised to high art;” something we love to hear.

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“Every inch of the artwork is different so it forces participation to examine and appreciate the visual complexity of the mural. Someone once said to us that “Calico is wallpaper raised to high art;” something we love to hear.”
Rachel and Nick Cope
Cofounders of Calico Wallpaper
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Can you share with us any formative moments that have left a lasting impression on you?

Nothing could have been more influential to us as a design studio, and individuals, as Hurricane Sandy passing through our city and our lives. The company was literally born out of the storm.

At the time, I [Nick] was managing a small Design firm through a variety of interior design projects and Rachel was working at a New York hospital putting her master’s degree in Art Therapy to use. After the storm both of us were out of work and so we took time to explore a creative project that had always interested us – namely creating a compelling product coupling my design experience and Rachel’s art and psychology background. Calico Wallpaper was born.

There is something about the tumult of the storm, watching the ten-foot waves crash against our building, that we internalized when creating our initial marbleized papers. It was not intentional, however, we realized how much the swirling of water and pigment resemble a fierce hurricane.

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