Despite my title for this article, Surface View isn’t just about bespoke wall coverings (glorious though they are) but is a company that prints just about anything onto just about everything. Actually, that is exaggerating somewhat, but it can certainly feel that way when you visit their website.
Surface View’s collections offer a carefully selected choice of images from museums, galleries and archives that range from Old Masters and vintage maps through black and white photography, vintage, kitsch and retro style, iconic textile designs, collaborations with contemporary designers to … well, you name it.
Or, if there isn’t anything in those collections that takes your fancy, you can provide your own image and have that printed onto (takes deep breath): wall murals, wall hangings, wall stickers, wall tiles, prints, mounted prints, epic posters, canvases, birch plywood panels, roller blinds, window films, lampshades and floor tiles. Oh, and not forgetting formica by the sheet, too.
Image via apartmenttherapy
And all this came about through a childhood fascination with stamp collecting. As a boy, founder of Surface View, Michael Ayerst, spent his Saturday mornings hunting through the collections of the Numisery Stamp and Coin Shop in Reading, searching for elusive and rare finds like the 1965 Post Office Tower Set with the tower missing. He remembers “this became the Holy Grail for me”. Michael goes on to explain how Surface View evolved from this boyhood obsession:
“Surface View is all about that magic of searching and finding, and for me, hunting down new and unusual image collections is a thrill on a par with those Saturday mornings of my youth. The Surface View collection began at the wonderful Sanders of Oxford where I spent many hours searching through their vintage etchings and prints. It dawned on me that I could collect images like I used to collect stamps, and use our state-of-the-art print technology to create unique interior products based on these wonderful pictures. I really do think there’s something special about creating a bespoke Surface View for your home, and I hope you’re as thrilled as we are by our fascinating images and the amazing things you can do with them. Happy hunting.”
Surface View’s collections are curated from sources that will already be familiar to many, including The National Gallery, The Victoria & Albert Museum, and The Royal Horticultural Society, as well as more obscure archives. If you saw the piece I wrote earlier in the year about the Hemmingway at Home stand at the HOME 2013 show, you’d have read about their collaboration with Surface View which resulted in two collections – HemingwayDesign, with its pop-art influenced bold colour and pattern, and The Land of Lost Content, a unique collection of British popular cultural artefacts and artworks co-owned by Stella Mitchell and Wayne Hemingway. The image below is from the latter collection:
Don’t worry – images can be scaled to whatever size you want – wall murals the size of your entire room like the one above aren’t compulsory! In fact, that’s one of the very best things about Surface View; if you’re wanting to create something bespoke for your home, and struggling to find the perfect image in the perfect size, you get to scale (and crop) your image of choice yourself before having it printed onto the surface you want.
This really brings out your inner art director/interior designer – it’s great fun deciding which part of the image to choose and how big or nor to blow it up. And it’s exactly this scaling up of images to quite gigantic proportions that makes some very traditional or classic pictures look incredibly modern.
All of which makes for a very personalized product indeed, but the service doesn’t end there; Surface View will also come and put up your wall mural for you, or install your blind, if you need them to.
I’m also delighted to see that one of the archives included in the Surface View collections is the Warner Textile Archive which I wrote about in a recent Colour + Pattern = Joy! feature about legendary textile designer Eddie Squires. Below is just one of the many stunning patterns available from the collection, and you can also read more about this particular collaboration on the Surface View blog.
Just about all Surface View products are printed and produced in the UK; their workshops where they make every print to order is based in Reading, where the story began. It’s all come a long way from a small boy’s love of stamp collecting, but that original passion for unusual images is still the driving force behind this unique and fascinating company.
Images: Surface View, and as individually credited.
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