Wallpaper For Kids That’s Not Exactly Just For Kids

STEFAN BOUBLIL, co-director of The Apartment, the New York interior / graphic design company, doesn’t believe in saccharine, non-challenging visual habitats for children. Take his usage of Timorous Beasties’ Euro Damask paper on the walls of his five-year-old son Zoel’s New York City loft bedroom.

It couldn’t get any more challenging and adult than the edgy Scottish design duo who mix natural and Gothic influences to produce end results like Devil Damask - a traditional lace with a Devil’s face hidden in the weave - or the infamous Glasgow Toile - a print that resembles historic French toile, but hides low-life city scenes instead. And yet, explains Boublil, “In a society in which more and more is done to ‘protect’ children to a fault, they are growing up unable to view the so-called dirty side of life.”

His solution? “I thought that Rorschach [the ink blot guy] had a great way of getting around the would-be thought dictators of our time: the power of imagination. What better gift to give a child than the ability for him or her to fire off a million different thoughts every morning and night, be they scary, soothing or, why not, erotic in nature. The idea of independence can be nurtured from birth and it made all the sense in the world to start with a non-verbal method to communicate it.”

Anyway, word is his son likes it too.

* Timorous Beasties Euro Damask wallpaper, £75 a roll www.timorousbeasties.com; The Apartment, www.theapt.com

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Posted 2 September 2008 in Decor, Design + Decoration

WONDER WALLS: Animal Menagerie

NAME: Inke Heiland

LIVES: Leiden, the Netherlands

INSPIRATIONS: Designers Hella Jongerius and Richard Hutton. Her kids Rune and Rifka, and “places and situations that aren’t perfect, are fragile or in a half-built state. Perfect harmony bores me.”

DUTCH DESIGNER Inke Heiland’s cut out wallpaper animals are so simple, they’re genius. Her silhouettes of lions, giraffes, elephants and monkeys (about £45 each) are slickly hand-cut from crazy limited edition vintage 60s and 70s papers, and mailed around the world in poster tubes accompanied by a DIY glueing kit and instructions. Read the rest of this article

Posted 1 September 2008 in Decor, Design + Decoration