Rock and roll

Rock and roll
Beneath Adam Calkin’s delicate nature-inspired wallpaper designs beats the heart of a true punk.
By David Nicholls. Photograph by Rachael Smith
SHOT AT LASSCO BRUNSWICK HOUSE (020-7394 2100)
I
t takes a little while to get used to the idea that
Adam Calkin is the person who designed the
wallpaper in front of me. On the table are reams
of traditional floral and faunal scenes; delicate
patterns on mottled pastel backgrounds. Sitting
beside them, explaining his inspiration and the
techniques he used, is Calkin: fortysomething and
generously tattooed, sporting biker boots and with
a wild mop of blond-streaked curly hair. He is
punk rock. His wallpaper is anything but.
Calkin’s appearance belies his artistic background and personal tastes. True, in 1976 he and
a friend opened a shop called Smutz on King’s
Road in London, where they sold their fashion
designs to a punk-rock clientele. But by the early
1980s his interests had shifted to interiors. ‘I realised early on that I didn’t have the personality to
be an interior designer,’ Calkin explains. ‘You have
to be a social animal and that isn’t really me.’
He preferred to let his skills with paint and
brush speak for him (he had previously been to art
college in Salisbury) and soon began taking commissions to produce large-scale wall murals. After
many years of faux-marbling and Italianate landscapes, the market changed – ‘There’s not so much
demand for paint effects these days,’ he admits – so
a few years ago he broadened his offering by producing hand-painted wallpaper. It was this work
that was spotted by the wallpaper and textiles
company Lewis & Wood, which earlier this year
asked Calkin to produce a range.
At first, he came up with designs that worked
with conventional printing formats; they required
slightly wider than normal paper, but they were
within the means of standard printers. Frustration
soon set in over the scale of the images Calkin
could produce. ‘They were very nice,’ he says,
with a hint of distaste in his voice, ‘but I found it
too restrictive.’
Calkin has a straightforward ratio for working
out the impact wallpaper should have: ‘a bigger
scale has a bigger effect’. So after much searching,
Top Adam Calkin with his Jasper Peony wallpaper.
Above Jasper Peony in two other
colourways and, bottom, Adam’s Eden
a manufacturer of extra-wide paper was found (in
Belgium) as well as a specialist printer (in Southall,
west London) who had the facilities to work with
such widths. Calkin went back to the drawingboard, now allowing his brushes to work across
a full 132cm of wallpaper – more than two and
a half times the width of a standard roll.
The wider format means the pattern is printed
over a larger surface area, and the repeated motif
consequently becomes less obvious. ‘It’s more like
a painting than wallpaper,’ says Calkin, who was
inspired by 18th-century wallpaper companies
such as Zuber, which is renowned for complex
panoramic designs.
Together with Lewis & Wood, Calkin had
chosen just two designs to go into this collaborative debut. Adam’s Eden is a delicate natureinspired pattern featuring songbirds, ferns and
flowers. Jasper Peony is a dynamic horticultural
print, with large-scale branches and blooms
winding their way in every direction. Both collections come in several smart colourways – including buttermilk with charcoal grey, and ivory with
Wedgwood blue – and they are also available in
a linen and jute fabric which is suitable for upholstery. It is not what you would expect from a
designer who listens to the White Stripes while he
works and has a tattoo featuring a Russian prison
symbol for anarchy. ‘It’s funny I know,’ Calkin
says, ‘but I really enjoy painting flora and fauna.’
Wallpaper, £35/m, and fabric, £67/m, from Lewis
& Wood: 01435-860080; lewisandwood.co.uk.
To commission Adam Calkin, call 07860-779489
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