Image: Fiona Howard, Imogen / Grass.

Inspired by the British coast and countryside, Fiona Howard’s wallpapers are all designed by hand — based on preliminary ideas in her sketchbooks of flowers, leaves and seeds collected while out walking. She then translates these observations from nature into a seamlessly repeating design which she then carefully carves into blocks of lino, and prints by hand, layering colours and different design aspects one after the other.

Recent collections include ‘Rockpools’ which was created after a walk on a local beach with her son Eddie at Climping, West Sussex. The afternoon brought back wonderful childhood memories for Fiona: gazing into bright watery pools, collecting limestone pebbles and pretty shells, searching for small crabs and floaty green seaweeds. She returned home with a pocket full of shells and immediately started sketching.

Image: Fiona Howard, Rockpools / Sand.

Fiona has been designing for over 30 years, working with many of the big interior design houses in London, Paris, and New York, creating collections of designs for home furnishing from wallpapers and fabrics to tabletop ceramics and bedlinen. Her recognisable ‘Dandelion Clocks’ design for Sandersons has become one of her most ubiquitous patterns.

A silver-lining from intermittent lockdowns of the past year, Fiona’s 2018 wallpaper collection has seen somewhat of a rejuvenation as we have all spent more time at home looking at the same four walls and scrutinising the homes of our friends and colleagues on Zoom calls. It’s no surprise that people want their homes to be a comforting, inspiring and beautiful haven — now more than ever.

Image: Fiona Howard, Harbour / Sky.

Just as many of us want to reclaim our homes for ourselves and our personalities, in lockdown last summer — nature took over. Flowers, weeds, birds and insects created a beautiful new humming wilderness which Fiona wanted to celebrate in a wallpaper. This became ‘Summer Meadow’. To help promote the natural environments that surround us and to ‘rewild’ our urbanscapes, Fiona gives a packet of wildflower seeds with each roll of this design sold.

Fervently inspired by nature, Fiona set out to create eco-friendly wallpapers for her designs. All her wallpapers are printed on FSC papers using environmentally friendly inks, and for every roll sold a tree is planted

Find out more about Fiona’s work on her website. Alternatively, view her beautiful work on Instagram or Facebook.