Meet The Maker: Fermoie

Meet the Maker 19th August 2022

When designing our bedrooms, Fermoie is a fabric house that we're particularly drawn to. Join us as we meet 'Meet The Maker' to learn about Fermoie's creative process and how they are able to produce so many rich and varied designs...

We’re hard at work designing for our upcoming hotel at Warren Street in Tribeca, New York. When designing our bedrooms, Fermoie is a fabric house that we’re particularly drawn to. Here in this recently completed scheme for room 1005 at Crosby Street Hotel, we have adorned the walls with Fermoie’s Wave linen fabric. We love how it brings layers of light, colour, texture and movement to the space.

What makes Fermoie so unique is their design and printing technique. Layers of colour on textured weaves shine through and interact with the prevailing light. This week we had the opportunity to chat with Jamie Shawcross, director of Fermoie. Join us as we meet ‘Meet The Maker’ to learn about Fermoie’s creative process and how they are able to produce so many rich and varied designs.

What is the creative process behind your designs?

All of our designs are drawn entirely by hand, seeking inspiration from nature, from historic documents and from a personal love and knowledge of pattern and colour from our team. We are generally working 12 to 18 months ahead and we are currently working on Autumn 2023 in our studio. Initial drawings and block cuts are being made, soon to be developed onto silk screens for early print and colour trials, before we move over to engraving of rotary screens for first production work. Colours are created in house using natural dyes and generating a wide, ever growing pool of colour from which we select for each new design.

One of our all-time favourite designs is ‘Wave’. How was this fabric designed?

The first glimpse was a wide brush stroke in black ink on paper by our Studio. We all loved its movement and texture and the Studio spent many months learning how to recreate it, layering colours in rotary print. Wave was definitely a design that showed Fermoie’s determination – ‘it is not right until it is right’. The Studio had a clear vision of what they wanted from the pattern, but had little idea how to make it work initially. It required determination and patience with quite a bit of frustration along the way. It is one of our favourites too with new colours added a year after the original launch. Often what looks like the simplest thing is the hardest to achieve.

Please tell us how Fermoie started…

From highly pigmented paint to printing fine textiles, Fermoie was the natural progression for Farrow & Ball founders, Tom Helme and Martin Ephson – taking their deep expertise in colour and light to a new, more textural dimension. In 2009 they got together again to create Fermoie, launching 10 years ago in 2012. Having examined the fabric market and found it predominantly patterned and coloured, they decided their niche was to create textured and tonal fabrics. Their unique discernment and expertise with colour and fabric allowed them to fuse between print and weave. The big mission was to bring back the enjoyment of printing, leading people not just to look at the pattern but also at the printing, asking themselves ‘however did they achieve that?’.

What is your favourite design and why?

Personally I love ‘Savernake’. ‘Savernake’ was drawn originally in the Savernake Forest which borders our factory in Wiltshire, England. I love the movement in the design and the glimpse of a second colour in the ‘stitch’.