The new West Riding Collection from Sheila Bownas

I’m very excited to be writing about the new West Riding Collection from Sheila Bownas today. Not only does it bring together the newly released West Riding textile design from the Sheila Bownas archives but also four very talented British designer makers.

The result? A small but beautifully formed collection of contemporary pieces for the home that includes furniture, ceramics and lighting as well as the textiles themselves.

The story of Sheila Bownas is fascinating, and even a little sad. Her prolific talent and output was unknown even to her family, and only discovered after her death in 2007.

It was then that relatives were amazed to discover hundreds of paintings and textile designs in her studio in Linton, near Skipton in the Yorkshire Dales.

Having shown artistic promise at a very early age, Sheila won a junior art scholarship to attend Skipton Art School from 1914 – 1916. She went on to gain a county art scholarship to attend the Slade School of Art in London.

There she won several prizes, and had five paintings accepted and exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts. In 1949 her postgraduate studies took her to Florence in Italy where she read the history of art.

It seems, though, that as a more comfortable alternative to selling her art, Sheila was drawn to surface pattern design for textiles and wallpapers. During the late 1950’s and 60’s, whilst living in London, she produced many designs for companies such as Liberty of London, Crown Wallpapers and Marks and Spencer.

In later life Sheila returned to Yorkshire and landscape and portrait painting. In 2008 her extraordinary archives were bought by Chelsea Cefai, who is finally bringing Sheila’s patterns to life and to public attention.

The newly released ‘West Riding’ pattern, and the accompanying collection, commemorate what would have been Bownas’ 90th year. The delicately graphic textile design depicts elements of the architecture in Linton, and the surrounding villages of North Yorkshire, where Bownas lived and worked in the later part of her life.

The fabric has been hand-printed in Sheffield by Sarah Waterhouse (who we wrote about previously here) using 100% hemp cloth and comes in three colourways – Ash Rose, Stone Grey, Mustard Yellow.