This is the second instalment of our Design Stories and this month we bring you ‘Birds & Beasts’. Also part of the ‘Garden of the Gods’ collection, ‘Birds & Beasts’ is a printed menagerie of the species naturalist and writer, Gerald Durrell collects and covets during his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu.

The Durrells (Gerald, his mother, two older brothers and older sister) relocated to Corfu from South London in 1935 when Gerald was ten, staying until the outbreak of war in 1939 when they returned to England. On Corfu his existence seems to have been almost entirely out of doors and he was completely free to explore the wealth of flora and fauna (but mainly fauna) that the island provided. He writes of boating excursions with only his dog for company, long expeditions to find a particular species and hours spent “watching the private lives of creatures”. He was home-schooled by a number of his eldest brother Lawrence’s friends, one of whom Theodore Stephanides, a doctor and naturalist, encouraged and nurtured Durrell’s existing keen love of nature. It was an idyllic few years for the budding naturalist and indeed Durrell said if he could he would “give every child the gift of my childhood”.

Gerald Durrell as a child on Corfu with Roger the dog (on the left) and an owl.

Durrell’s time on Corfu prompted him to write a trilogy of autobiographical books about his time there. Named after the second of these, my design ‘Birds and Beasts’ is a zoological parade of the many birds, animals, insects, fish and sea creatures referenced, chased, acquired and collected by the young Gerald throughout the three books. His faithful dog Roger, his donkey Sally, Ulysses the owl, Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon and beetles from the Rose-Beetle man, blennies, dolphins, a wild boar and Alecko the seagull all feature.

It was Corfu and Durrell’s books that initially inspired the collection but a slightly later trip to Greece, this time Crete, provided a wealth of inspiration for how the design now looks. The Palace at Knossos (and home to the Labyrinth or not as seems to be the case) didn’t really light me up. It was terribly hot on the day we chose to visit and the site pretty barren, allowing the white sunlight to reflect unmercifully off the limestone and double-cook any unwitting sightseer. I struggled to enjoy much about it save the eventual sanctuary of the shade of a large Fig tree. The pseudo ruins and reproduction murals definitely did not transport me back to life in ancient Minoa. Instead, stripped of its artefacts and then gaudily rebuilt and repainted, the palace is served up with a flavour that sits somewhere between a theme-park and a school playground.

Embroidery from an antique shop in Heraklion and pots from the Archeological Museum

The capital Heraklion, however, houses the good stuff. All the personality and plunder missing from the palace is here at the Archeological Museum. By the time we got there I was, of course, particularly primed to favour it unreservedly to the oven of a ruin but I was rewarded in my bias with a hall of marbles, the transplanted frescoes from the palace and case after case of clay vessels quirkily illustrated with fish, birds and animals all enclosed in a refreshingly air-conditioned environment. The pots particularly are total design dynamite and I’ve come back to them as a reference point repeatedly long after they planted the seed of inspiration for the final feel of ‘Birds & Beasts’. It was also here, and with total delight, that I recognised the inspiration for one of Josef Frank’s fabrics, Anakreon: a large 3500 yr old fresco (again from Knossos and again somewhat defaced in its restoration) featuring a central blue bird. I felt pretty pleased to have stumbled into such solid company.

Josef Frank’s design Anakreon (above) and (below) the mural from Knossos that inspired it.

Ok postcard over. Birds and beasts sketched and assembled, I engraved each one onto scraperboard inspired by the single colour, graphic ceramic decorations we’d seen at the museum and then in an effort to get everyone into some sort of order I looked to some more recent, Greek folk embroidery to determine colours and layout. The result is a homage to Durrell and his love of animals but also ancient Minoa and those lovely painted pots despite Durrell’s well documented complete lack of interest in Greek history.

Clockwise from top left: My original illustrations, printing on the gali and the screen we use to print the fabric.

I have grown very fond of this pattern over the years (particularly since having my own children). Despite being a single colour design, it has regularly proved a complete nightmare to print due to the fine lines and has prompted the occasional but humorous reaction “I couldn’t possibly use that. I cannot stand frogs/snakes/owls etc.” so definitively not one for the fauna-phobic! Its minor drawbacks have only increased my affection for it and I always intended to use it in my children’s room. I finally committed to making them a pair of curtains over this last winter. I am no curtain-maker but they’re not looking at the pleats or the fact that the lining is very definitely too short and only just meets the turn up.

Children’s bedrooms from Natasha Mann (left) and Tom Morris (right)

A more professional finish can be seen here in these delightful children’s rooms from Natasha Mann and Tom Morris. And now we are producing it as a wallpaper I’m very much looking forward to seeing it in more rooms, children’s and otherwise, and maybe even prompting a very rewarding dip into Durrell.

‘Margo’ is our most popular print so I thought it would be a good one to kick off this series of ‘Design Stories’. My aim is that these stories take you through the thoughts and inspiration behind each design, how I translated my ideas onto paper and into a pattern, how we produced the final product and then how that product has then been used by others to tell another story. So without further ado… ‘Margo’.

During a wonderful holiday to the Greek island of Corfu I read author and zoologist Gerald Durrell’s delightfully funny, autobiographical book, My Family and Other Animals, describing his unconventional childhood there. Lying on my front on a rocky beach in the September sunshine, his evocative prose completely focused my Corfiot experience and I looked for what he vividly described: the colours, the plants and animals, sounds and smells, the temperature and textures and found pockets of the landscape and life he remembered, still there if occasionally marred by a large boat of burnt tourists or an abandoned motorbike.

Corfu, Clementines and all my Gerald Durrell books

‘Margo’ is one of a small collection of prints I designed following this trip, inspired by both my short time on Corfu and Durrell’s books and named the ‘Garden of the Gods’ after Durrell’s title, both for the island and his third book in the trilogy.

The designs themselves draw on Corfu’s flora and fauna as described by Durrell and aim to replicate the colours, atmosphere and characters (both human and otherwise) so richly expressed in his writing. The colours we’ve used in the final fabric prints reflect the Mediterranean motifs: deep, clear blues, verdant greens and bright turquoise, dusty chalk and terracotta, with a smattering of citrus and geranium (pigment name picking is pretentious but pungent: you get the idea).

My initial watercolour sketch for the design, pencil drawing and adding detail to the print layers.

An orchard of fruit and flowers, ‘Margo’ is a tribute to Margaret, the only Durrell daughter and Gerry’s teenaged sister. Life, while idyllic, seems reasonably frustrating for Margo. She is isolated from girls her own age at a time when you might look for reassurance from your contemporaries. She is primarily preoccupied (according to Gerald) with “hectic affairs of the heart”. Lurching through numerous, sentimental dilemmas, she has only a preoccupied mother and three brothers for counsel each of whom are equally absorbed in their own pursuits, pausing but briefly to ridicule (however humorously) her weight, complexion or current paramour. I designed this fabric for her. I too, blundered through my adolescence as one of only two girls (my sister being the other) at an all boys’ boarding school where my father taught. While I lacked some of Margo’s dramatic conduct and romantic impulse (possibly my parents would disagree), I can utterly empathise with her situation as she teeters on the threshold of womanhood in a faintly unusual, environment.

Photograph by Ewald Hoinkis, 1940s summer prints and Liberty & Co dress fabric 1938

This design was my first floral print. Launching off the deep end, it unashamedly celebrates flourishing femininity illustrating many of Corfu’s blooms: anemones, roses, magnolia, orange blossom and, of course, that Mediterranean classic, the geranium. There’s even a somewhat obvious moth emerging from its cocoon (as Durrell would say “just in case we missed the point”). The pattern references the bold fashion prints of the 40s that Margo may or may not have worn but I love them so it was a great excuse to research that element and get the feeling absorbed into the design.

Screen printing ‘Margo’. Two colours on the left and then four on the right

We screen print most of our designs. The process retains a wonderful depth of colour and texture and means that every run is unique (sometimes this is a blessing, sometimes I wouldn’t describe it as such). We print Margo in three colour ways, Lemon, Pink and Mandarin, on an oyster linen. The scale of the huge horizontal repeat means we will struggle to get it onto a conventional wallpaper but we will try at some point.

‘Margo’ used in interiors from Sarah Vanrenen left and Henri Fitzwilliam-Lay right

It is the absolute cherry on the cake in my job to see my fabrics and wallpapers used in other designer’s interiors and in the case of this fabric it is used very much in the spirit in which it was designed (but perhaps that always happens) in bold, playful, feminine rooms with serious character. Rather like Margo herself.