Out and About: Ivo Prints

Last week, a few members of our team had the opportunity to visit Ivo Prints, a London-based textile and wallpaper printing company. It was established in 1963 by Ellen Haas & Partners and since then they have produced fabrics and wallcoverings for many well known designers, as well as the printing for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

On site they have an impressive archive of screens with all the prints they have made, including the original stencil for Vivienne Westwood’s trademark print which they developed.

The colours are specifically created for each screen before being double checked with the original design to make sure they are a perfect match.

Podge, the current manager, was kind enough to show us around and explain the different types of printing and processes they use.

Ivo Prints prepare all of the cloth for their printing on site, but the first step of the actual printing process is colour separation. A different screen is created for each colour used in hand silk screen printing, gali printing and flatbed printing, which are just three of the different types of processes they use.

Below you can see a design being laid out and prepared for printing. The chosen technique impacts how many colours can be used.

It was also fascinating to see light technology being used to remove the parts of a design where the ink colour comes through, creating a negative space.

Here at Crosby Street Hotel, you can see the fabric come to life on the headboard and cushions of this luxury room.

Further into the factory are large tables that are each 50 metres long. This is where the semi-automatic or ‘Gali’ printing is done. We were able to see our ‘Ozone’ fabric for Christopher Farr Cloth that had just finished printing in the blue and green colourway.

We also took advantage of our time there to work on a special project we are planning with Thomas Lavin in LA that will be launching very soon – stay tuned!

You can see the variation of the Orange and Pink ‘Ozone’ colourway here in a room at The Soho Hotel. This particular headboard is also available to buy on Shop Kit Kemp and will be sure to add a pop of colour to any bedroom!

Once the printing process for the fabric is finished, a dedicated person checks each individual design to ensure there are no flaws, stains or fabric marks.

At the end of the tour, we were lucky enough to see a very special piece. This one was printed by Podge and we were surprised to hear that it only used four different colours. The depth and tones of the finished piece were extraordinary.

We hope you enjoyed our tour of Ivo Prints as much as we did!