Hasta La Ideas

Glaswegian design studio Timorous Beasties has created a “dramatic and vibrant” wallpaper collection featuring damask-inspired, totemic patterns.

Called Totem Damask, the extravagant wallpaper range consists of highly-patterned vertical “totems” made of floral damask imagery that would not look amiss on the walls of a stately manor house.

“Damasks are a generic name given to patterns that are now so embedded in the mists of time, that they mean different things depending on where you live, an ideal all-encompassing pattern,” the designers told Dezeen.

“They symbolise Middle Eastern patterns used on rugs, suggesting florals and other visual motives without being representational and were also used as silk patterns in grand houses of the 17th and 18th centuries,” they said.

Available in nine colour pathways, each ten-metre roll of wallpaper features no repeated patterns.

Users can connect the wallpaper sheets together using the vertical stripes or “totems”, meaning that the rolls can be customised in a number of ways to create unique and varied results.

“We are living in a time of visual eclecticism, where we are mixing and matching everything,” they explained.

According to Timorous Beasties, the collection is meant to represent and pay homage to patterns throughout history. “It is a universal pattern that almost everyone can relate to,” they said.

“Like an emblem of our times, the eclectic geometrics, damasks, and symmetrical shapes overlap and merge together, creating a blend of traditional and modern in this idiosyncratic design,” explained the designers.

“It resembles a totem because the images are almost stacked up on top of one another, and totems symbolise and serve as an emblem of a group of a people, tribe or clan,” they continued.

Each roll of wallpaper was created using a variety of methods, including dripping paint, bleeding ink, smudging, ripping and computer-led graphic design.

“The patterns are inspired by the freedom of being able to produce experimental artwork, rich in colours and textures, that we would not have been able to print less than a decade ago,” said the designers.

In a similar move towards maximalism, Dutch brand Moooi launched a series of wall coverings and textures inspired by archive drawings of bygone creatures.

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