Reams of lustrous wallpaper, etched and pressed by hand
Hugh Dunford Wood creates opulent patterns on handprinted wallpaper, keeping an age-old skill alive
Sunshine beams through skylight windows onto a studio cluttered with sheafs of paper. A decorated length snakes down the table, then up and over a bar suspended from the ceiling like a clothes airer. While it dries, Hugh Dunford Wood, dressed in paint-flecked overalls, climbs onto the table and stamps on a lino block to press the next section. He is printing his handmade wallpaper. The studio is full of paraphernalia related to Hugh’s art. Dribbles of rainbow colour run down the side of a ceramic sink; brushes poke out of pots; artwork covers the walls, and glass-fronted cabinets contain piles of drawings. The artist’s 46 sketch books, one for each year of his work, line a shelf. Hugh’s own hand-printed wallpaper forms a backdrop for his colourful paintings, adorning every room in the house. Much of it is inspired by nature, including the plants and animals he sees around his home on the Dorset coast. What he likes about wallpaper is that it is “visual muzak,” he says. “Your eye unconsciously plays over it as you’re talking, and you see the patterns. I use only two colours so it’s simpler to accept by the eye. If they are close in tone, it’s elegant and quietly decorative, and it acts as a good background to paintings.” Blue, green and terracotta feature strongly, overlaid with subtle metallic shades.
Chance meeting
Hugh has been selling wallpaper for 10 years, although he has always used it to decorate his own home. He also paints portraits and landscapes and prints linocut images on paper and fabric. When first starting out as an artist in the 1970s,
wallpaper was out of fashion. “Visitors used to shade their eyes,” he says. Then, when he was selling his house in Oxfordshire a decade ago, he noticed that would-be buyers kept asking where he had sourced the wallpaper. “I realised we were back in vogue. I’ve always quite liked having a craft on the side. Painting is very isolating but, with this, I can have someone printing with me on larger jobs.” Most of the creative expression is found in the designing, at the start. “I make one or two new designs a year. Then the printing itself is calming in its rhythms and repetition,” he says. Hugh trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford and learned wallpaper printing when he met noted print-maker Peggy Richards, known professionally as Peggy Angus, in a London restaurant. “Three of us had been drawing a model in a friend’s studio, and we went out for a meal. The only room was at a long table with women celebrating Peggy’s 68th birthday. We all got rather merry, then we went back to her studio. Later, I went to live at Peggy’s studio and got her wallpaper business going. She had designed tiles for hotels, then an architect asked her to make wallpaper. Her designs were tile-sized, so printing took forever. I made them bigger and helped her get more commissions. She was a wonderful mentor.” Hugh left Peggy’s studio when he married and began concentrating on his own painting, living abroad for a time. But he has also always enjoyed what he refers to as the “democracy” of printing. He produces linocut prints as well as printed cushions, which are more affordable than a painting and so within easier reach for many people.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful” William Morris
Demand for his wallpaper has risen steadily over the past 10 years. “Wallpaper is now a staple part of a designer’s armoury,” he says. “The feature wall doesn’t work for me. My preference is to wrap myself in pattern.” Clients are a mix of private individuals and interior designers. He has been commissioned by the National Trust, opera houses, archbishops’ palaces and film stars. “I also specialise in lavatories, because people want some of the wallpaper, but can’t necessarily afford much.” An average room needs eight rolls, each roll costing £200.
Inspiration for patterns
Working out a new design takes approximately a week, but perfecting it requires at least half a dozen further phases of tweaking and test printing. Most of the imagery is inspired by nature, in common with the Victorian father of handcrafted wallpaper design, William Morris. “He is inescapable as an influence; not directly, but through Peggy,” says Hugh. “She said she would spend the first 500 years in Heaven talking to him.” One of Hugh’s patterns features cardoons: large thistles that he grew in his garden. The latest was inspired by the magnolia tree outside his house and another, the nearby woods. His Field of Hares design was taken from studies of rabbits in one of his old sketchbooks. “They were done when we were camping in the Yorkshire Dales, but their ears are too long for rabbits, so they’ve become hares.” One motif resulted after watching seagull feathers drift past his window from nests on the roof. “You don’t want a design to be too obvious,” he says. “You don’t want elements on top of each other, such as flowers, so you space them out. You’ve got to look out for holes in a design, then you have to work out how it’s going to repeat; how it will join side to side and top and bottom.” A roll of wallpaper is 22in (56cm) across, so the design is then photocopied to either half or full width.
Transferring the design
Once ready, the pattern is transferred through carbon paper onto a piece of artist’s lino. Hugh paints the lino white first, so the imprint is clearly visible. “I then sit out on the veranda and cut away the negative space with a V-shaped gouge for a day or two. If you keep it sharp, it’s like cutting through butter. Lino is easy to use. It’s light and flexible, and if you make a mistake, you can always cut out that section and stick in another bit.” The lino is mounted on thin scrap wood so it is not too floppy, but can easily be lifted off the paper without smudging. The paper itself is heavy lining paper bought in 10m rolls from a building supplier. Hugh paints it first in the chosen background colour on a 6ft (180cm) long table in the middle of his studio. He spreads a blanket underneath to provide cushioning, which allows the paint from the printing block to be better absorbed by the paper.
Once the background is dry, the lino block is painted in the design colour with a brush and placed face down on the paper using positioning marks that Hugh has drawn on the back. “You rub it on the back with a roller or stand on it. By standing on the block, you get good, even pressure. I was having problems with my hand using a roller, so I do practically everything now standing on the table.” To dry the paper, Hugh has fashioned an apparatus comprising three parallel lengths of plastic downpipe, which hang from the ceiling, over which the paper is draped. The paint is then spray-washed off the block before it dries and the block stored away for future use. If required, the wallpaper can be waterproofed by applying a paste-like substance which dries clear. Each 10m x 56cm roll takes approximately three hours to complete.
Individual touch
Hugh uses ordinary emulsion paint, often creating his own colours. “I go down to the seafront and get old ice-cream cartons and mix masses of colour in them,” he says. He does not mind if the background painting appears slightly streaky. “I think it’s more attractive to have a texture underneath, so it looks almost silky. The pattern doesn’t quite match up from time to time, but once it’s over a whole wall, it doesn’t jar on
the eye. The texture and misprints are all part of it. That’s why the National Trust uses me: the wallpaper fits into their houses and doesn’t look new.” Hugh is passionate about the handmade aspects of his wallpaper. “I like the fact that it’s irregular,” he says. “It’s as though someone has actually stencilled the whole wall. I’ve never sold the designs themselves because I’m not interested in producing masses of paper and becoming rich. Whenever I can, I buy handmade. To me, it’s like the difference between live and recorded music.” Hugh’s handcrafted designs are an antidote to the throwaway culture of mass-produced goods, and he is busy working on new motifs, one of mice and another of couples dancing. “There will always be a demand for handmade work,” he says.
“Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, All various, each a perfect whole From living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul” Alfred Lord Tennyson ‘The Palace of Art’