Wallpaper is having a moment. Whether one’s tastes run to dainty florals or exuberant cabbage roses, circus-tent stripes or sophisticated abstract designs, it’s a popular form of self-expression in home decorating right now and generally a more interesting way to finish a wall than mere paint.
For designers and artists, launching a wallpaper collection is a way to bring their artistic vision to a new medium, expand the business or even add a new dimension to their home design work. For some, it can rise to the level of fine art.
In the case of Alykhan Velji, his wallpaper collection was a way of combining the colours of his childhood heritage in Tanzania with his love for the muscular forms of Brutalism. For bespoke wallpaper artist Candice Kaye, each commission is a new, unique work of art, designed for a specific client and a particular setting, but no less creatively inspired for that.
Alykhan Velji Designs
Alykhan Velji, Calgary-based designer and creative director of Alykhan Velji Designs, initially embarked on his recent collaboration with the Toronto-based custom wallpaper fabricator Rollout with an interest in creating murals for his residential projects. Velji had noticed that murals were becoming more popular in residential and saw creative as well as commercial possibilities in developing his own line.
Velji’s early designs were inspired largely, he says, by the colours and visual imagery of his Tanzanian roots. “My Tanzanian heritage often presents itself in some way, shape or form,” he laughs, adding, “especially the red earth of Tanzania, which is a beautiful rich colour, and the waters and beaches of Zanzibar.” He toyed with different designs and a variety of colour combinations but says that his first efforts never quite produced the impact he wanted; he ended up putting the project aside for a while.
It wasn’t until he happened across some images of Brutalist buildings in a vintage architecture book that inspiration struck again. Brutalism emerged in Europe in the 1950s as a minimalist, blocky architecture style mainly based on steel-reinforced concrete, which was usually left in its raw form after completion (leading to the name, which derives from the French béton brut, or raw concrete).
Now, Brutalism has its adherents as an art form, but Velji concedes that seeing it as the inspiration for something as decorative as wallpaper might sound a bit unexpected. “I’m a huge fan of juxtaposing and finding beauty in everything,” he says. “Despite the heaviness of blocks of concrete, I could also see the beauty in its forms and shapes.”
As he continues, “I would start by doing a broad search of images of Brutalist buildings online, then I’d take the buildings I’d like and start sketching the shapes.” He mentions the recently renovated Glenbow Museum in Calgary as one example.
Velji’s full collection, available for custom order on the Rollout site, shows both influences, in some cases simultaneously; some of the patterns are available in a choice of colourways. Because the papers are made to custom order, he says, they can be scaled to fit a range of interior spaces and work equally well hung horizontally or vertically. They’re also available in a selection of substrates, each of which produces a unique effect: vinyl, grasscloth and eventually, metallics.
The complete collection, Velji explains, comprises three designs: Elements, with its subtle linen texture, expresses his take on the soft forms and sharp angles of Brutalism in natural, Tanzanian-inspired colours; Dune, which reflects the soft, windblown lines and hues of African desert sands; and Terra, with its big, freeform shapes and breezy, ethereal palette. The subtle linear texture of Terra could be interpreted as resembling lines in trowelled concrete.
So far, the designs have found their greatest audience in commercial, office and retail spaces, but he sees these designs as working equally well in a home setting: anywhere you have a larger wall space, from a dining room to a large accent wall. “It’s really about the shapes and forms you see in Brutalism,” he explains. “So the designs aren’t so much about a literal translation of the style, as a starting point.”
Candice Kaye Design
As part of a stylish transformation of a New York factory warehouse space into a contemporary loft residence, Canadian-born, L.A.-based bespoke wallpaper artist Candice Kaye created a wallpaper for the powder room that was, in essence, a one-of-a-kind Art Deco-inspired work of art — and in fact, that’s how Candice approaches all her commissions.
Bespoke wallpaper, fabric and rug design is not exactly a line of work one might plan to enter as a profession, and in fact she admits her journey to this rarified specialty was somewhat convoluted. While she had always been artistic, developing a keen eye for photography and pursuing a career early on as a dancer, she earned her undergraduate degree in a completely different field.
However, not long after graduating, Kaye was travelling overseas and happened to step into a fabric store in Paris. “I was completely blown away. It had never occurred to me that fabric and wallpaper and rugs were actually designed and painted by people! I decided that’s what I wanted to do.”
She enrolled in New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology’s textiles program, and on graduation went to work at a well-respected New York textile company, where she was exposed to some of the world’s most prestigious high-end design firms, and learned the finer points of textile design, specifically rug manufacture. That’s when the next card fell into place, she says: she was asked to design a custom wallpaper for the New York and Toronto restaurant group Maman.
“At that time, commercial-grade wallpaper wasn’t that creative; it was even hard to find printers who could do my designs for commercial settings. It was like starting from scratch.”
But something about the métier spoke to her. She pulled up stakes, returned to her mother’s suburban Toronto home, and hung out her shingle as a custom wallpaper designer. It was the time of Instagram, she says, and the business began to attract attention, almost all of it through word of mouth.
“I realized early on that there was no way I was going to compete with the big established wallpaper companies. So, I set out to provide something different: I would only create one-of-a-kind designs and never repeat myself. At the time, people thought I was crazy; how would I come up with new designs for each new client? But in fact, that’s never a problem; inspiration is everywhere.”
With the New York loft, inspiration came in the form of one of the exquisite marble floor tiles, with their intricate starburst design and metallic sheen, which the clients had brought to their first meeting. During an early conversation, one of the clients also mentioned a love for Art Deco, and the idea took form. Kaye began researching classic Art Deco floral designs and arrived at a range of options which included this one: a spare yet intricately detailed motif of lotus blossoms and stems, which almost seems lit from within.
The powder room’s fixtures and gold accessories led her to choose a very special paper from Montréal which has a delicately embossed, shimmering surface. The design was then custom printed to order and finished by hand. “Choosing bespoke wallpaper is a very personal thing,” she says. “When people are investing this kind of money, I want it to be something different from anything that’s been done before.
“I think of it as like buying art or a very special antique piece of furniture. You’re investing in it because you know it’s the only one like it in the world.”
As featured in the November-December 2024 issue of Canadian Interiors magazine.
