UK-based British design studio, Wallace Sewell, was established by Harriet Wallace-Jones and Emma Sewell after graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1990. Their diverse portfolio includes scarves for the Tate museums as well as moquette fabric designs for Transport for London’s underground seating. When exhibiting for the first time in 1992, their pieces created much enthusiasm and interest, particularly from Barney’s, New York who placed an order for scarves. This proved instrumental in helping to lay the foundations of the Wallace Sewell brand. Barneys are still buying today and Wallace Sewell now supply over 300 stockists in 20 countries. They have worked with various boutique hotels, designing and producing bespoke bedspreads, and more recently have been invited to be guest designers for West Elm, a US-based home and interior retailer. Working from London and Dorset, this progressive studio pioneers excellence and originality within their woven products.
Combining innovation with practical solutions, Wallace Sewell are known for their use of colour, structure and yarn in surprising geometric formats. Inspired by paintings, they create individual contemporary fabrics with strikingly bold, asymmetric blocks and stripes of varying scales, which bring together a plethora of elements within one piece.
Strongly influenced by the Bauhaus for its aesthetic and design ideology, Wallace Sewell strive to unite craft and manufacturing, embracing traditional techniques. The initial design process begins on handlooms in the London and Dorset studios. Production then takes place in a family-run mill, fusing tradition with state of the art technology, allowing flexibility in order to weave a variety of qualities from small batches to larger quantities. Fabric is then washed and pressed at the finishers to give the cloth a luxurious handle. Since Wallace Sewell’s inception, Emma and Harriet are proud to have always worked in the UK, embracing the British Textile Industry for its wealth of expertise and production excellence.
