Neisha Crosland is widely recognised as one of Britain’s foremost designers, with her exquisite use of colour and pattern. Here, she talks about her ‘magpie instinct’ and the inspiration behind her latest wallpaper collection
What drew you to design in the first place?
I began painting and drawing from an early age and it made me look closely at things. I was very short-sighted, which gave me a wonderful magnified vision when looking closely at objects. I could only see things very close up; I could see the veins on leaves and speckles on petals very clearly. Maybe this was where my fascination with pattern began. My earliest memory of it was the checks on a Fritillaria Tulip still covered in dew – it looked like the handiwork of a garden elf that had been done overnight. A few years later I saw a drawing of the same type of tulip for a design destined for a Derby porcelain plate. However, my Eureka moment, which led me to study textiles, was at the age of 22, when I took a wrong turn at the V&A and came across the 15th and 16th-century Ottoman textiles and their bold simple dots and crescents tulip motifs. I was bowled over by the rich quality of colour tone and how modern they were.
How did you get your career started?
I was picked out at my RCA degree show by Tony Little of Osborne & Little. He offered me a job translating my show textiles into a collection of wallpapers and fabrics.
Can you describe to us your designing process and where you go for inspiration?
As Alan Bennett said: ‘The best ideas come from seeing things out of the corner of your eye’, so inspiration can take one by surprise. But like any creative person we have a magpie instinct to pick up on visual stimuli. I go to galleries, watch films, buy books. I also travel a lot, particularly to Japan, Morocco, Spain and Paris. Picking up inspiration is second nature to me – it’s just something that happens along the way. It is the easy bit. It’s what you do with it afterwards that counts.
I have a lot of wall space in my studio and sliding panels, as I love to organise my ideas into categories. There is also a board where I pin anything that I want that triggers a seed of an idea. Something might sit there for months. Then an idea gets moved to another board and from that I start sketching my idea for a layout of motifs in rough repeat. Ultimately I will trace out the motif in real life-size scale.
The mapping out of the design is done in black pen or pencil so as to get the shapes and repeat right. I am deeply embedded in the technique I was taught at Camberwell and the Royal College of Art. We were drilled in the importance of drawing and to take each step of the process as a separate adventure that eventually links everything together.
Colour has the power to give the design its mood. I create my colours by mixing paint and a combination of using the computer and scanning in colour chips. But always, even when I am doing the first mapping out in blacks and greys, I will have in the back of my mind the first colourway I want to try.
At art college we made our own screens for printing with and even the gum Arabic to stick the cloth down on the table as well as mixing our own dyes in a dye lab. I love the process. I love that each stage adds an element of alchemy, and even though I do not have access to a dye lab or print table, there are wonderful mills that provide inspiring ways of weaving and printing cloth and wallpaper. I enjoy nursing the wallpaper and fabric through these manufacturing processes. It is very important to work closely with mills and printers to ensure that the designs get translated correctly. Sometimes it entails a series of trials before I am happy to press the button for production.
What do you listen to when you are designing or do you prefer silence?
Mostly I listen to classical music or Radio 4 or 3.
Your scarves are beautiful. How do you choose your colour combinations?
Often by trying to make the ugliest colours beautiful by combining them with other obviously beautiful colours. But a lot of experimenting goes on. I collect colour ideas and pin them on my wall. It can be ribbons, sweet wrappers, postcards of painting, photographs of flowers, all sorts of things.
What inspired your latest ‘Poppaea’ wallpaper and fabric collection?
The idea for the Poppaea collection came to me after I visited Villa Oplontis in Italy. It is the seaside villa that once belonged to the notorious wife of Emperor Nero, who used it for leisure and parties. The walls have frescoes full of cacti, baskets of figs, birds, trailing ivy and African geometrics which I used for inspiration. The colours came from a trip to India where the Mughal Empire like the Roman Empire, used colour schemes that were governed by wealth. The wealthy favoured deep florid colours and metals like gold and silver in their decoration while the less rich used earthy colours such as browns and ochre made from natural dyes. I also admired Mughal carvings in the milky marble ivory. I mixed all these colour groups with a twist of 1960s chic.
What would you say makes a pattern translate successfully into a room?
Layering pattern. Pattern with pattern so that you have mixtures of pattern as well as clashes of pattern and scale. But it must create a harmony and feeling of well-being.
How important is craftsmanship to you?
I like all things well done and have a great respect for people who dedicate a lifetime to perfecting, preserving and developing a technique.
Would you say you prefer order or clutter in your home and workplace?
Order. But I am not a minimalist; I make and have a lot of clutter, but my clutter is ordered clutter. I enjoying arranging groups of objects and I love tidiness. I find it sorts my mind out and that the act of tidying is very cathartic.
What is your proudest achievement? The first time I saw a lady wearing one of my scarves – it happened to be in Waitrose. I remember I followed her round the cereal section like a groupie! It felt like a real achievement to have people wanting to buy and wear my designs.
Neisha Crosland’s work can be found at www.neishacrosland.com
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