Chinoiserie, Embroidery, and British Charisma: An Interview with Benjamin Disney of Fromental

When we walked into the Boston Design Center today, we were not sure
 what to expect from this impromptu interview. We were joined by Nancy 
Stracka herself as we sat around a table in the Webster showroom. When 
we were introduced to Benjamin, we could sense his gregarious 
personality right away. Though he denies having any salesman skills, he won us over with his Aussie accent that had overtones of British charm. 
This comes as no shock considering he is in charge of “new business development” for Fromental, and he is basically "the face" of the company.

Fromental is a small London based company that makes hand-painted
 wallpaper. It was started in 2004 by a married couple, Tim Butcher and
 Lizzie Deshayes. Quickly the team added David Jones, and Benjamin and 
Rachel Disney. Benjamin perfectly describes the company as a “family.” With him he brought a book of samples from all the company's
 collections, as well as some panels of the newest designs added to the
 collections, which can be described as nothing less than art. These 
exquisite wall coverings have no repeating patterns, and are all custom
 painted by masters trained in chinoiserie in China. As Benjamin tells 
us, they pretty much sell themselves. Here is what he had to say to us…

Benjamin Disney of Fromental: So, to begin with, we are four and a half years old. We are a very young company. It was started by a husband and wife team called Tim Butcher and Lizzie Deshayes. They respectively were the creative and artistic directors at de Gournay for about seven years. So they have a seven year grounding in wallpaper and constantly traveling to china to work with the artists to develop it. They started this company because they wanted to basically express a lot more contemporary designs rather than just the traditional chinoiserie aspect of things. And they started with the first collection, the 20th century collection, then they moved back into the chinoiserie realm because they had a lot of old clients asking for it from them. But again, they took a contemporary approach into the colors, into the actual designs themselves. Although, chinoiserie is still quite a traditional art form and the artists that come and work for us are actually now studying a lot of different disciplines as well as doing these non-repeating murals that they’ve been doing for centuries. So, we’ll go through these quickly. (He opens the book and we all lean in to examine the amazing detail painted on the silk) As I said these panels are all hand-painted and all non-repeating, so if you need seventeen panels we will do seventeen unique panels for you. Everything is made to fit each individual space, so we need elevations and such to allow us to give you a quote as well as create a black and white image like that which shows the layout and composition. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual design itself in-situ because it’s black and white and because of that, it’s hard for a client to get his head around how it’s going to look on the walls. So it’s more of a design tool than anything else. So again, we’ve got most of our work on silk, but we can do this European paper as well with a matte sort of painted background. The paper definitely simplifies the installation process versus the silk.

Nancy Stracka Interiors: What type of paint do you use?

BD: Well it’s an emulsion-based paint. This actually has quite a lot of elastic properties because it needs to be rolled up and not crack. So the paint is quite elastic and when it’s applied on the walls, it actually does stretch slightly when it goes up. You can’t just get any “Joe Decorator” to slap it up on the wall. The silk is quite unforgiving. Any sort of mistake and the silk will either fall apart or crack and do what it does. (He flips through some more pages with us in silent awe) These dye lots have changed over the years. Silk is a natural product and you will get color variation between dye lots and sometimes even within the same dye lot. It comes down to the chemical composition of the dyes used at the time. Nine times out of ten, you can’t tell because of the design that the eye is drawn to, but occasionally it is noticeable. (We look through more pages in silence except for the occasional gasp or whisper like “that’s so beautiful”. Nancy, as a former fabric designer has an understanding and appreciation for all of this that is deeper than ours or just about anyone else. The level of her amazement at these samples should be enough to convince anybody of their quality.) All of these designs originated from London, basically from Lizzie. She has compiled all of these, done them all herself, all the color work is all hers or Tim’s. Tim may not have the draftsmanship skills to put these designs out, but his eye is in color and composition. He can look at things and actually direct the way the design is going to go. Lizzie can execute them incredibly well taking his direction. They are an incredibly talented team.

NSI: How many of you are there at Fromental?

BD: Well there are seven of us in London that do everything. Tim and Lizzie, brains of the company, then you have David who is the financial controller and they are the three main partners of the business. Myself and my wife do the outside sales, generally running around and being pretty much the face of the company. My wife Rach, she oversees every project. The five of us have been there since day one. I’ve seen this company pretty much grow from my living room floor. They’re old friends of ours and they are our family. We have our occasional spats as all families do, having two married couples in a small office in London. Actually in China it’s also a married couple that runs the operation over there. So we are teetering constantly on the edge (laughs). But it’s always good because this stuff, you know, I’m not a salesperson at all, and it does the job for me, it’s brilliant. This one is one of my favorites actually, I’ve seen it installed a few times. On a tall wall it’s quite impressive. (He shows us another page in the book of a large grass design done in interesting color combinations.)

NSI: It’s so fun!

BD: Yeah, I think it’s really cool. And this (He turns to a new page) is chinoiserie. (There’s another flurry of newfound amazement at the incredible delicateness of the details in this form of painting.)

NSI: This is just amazing. This is a different kind of paint that you use right?

BD: Yes, the paint is a wash; a lot of water goes into it. As well as a lot of time. We are not cheap, but there’s a good reason for that. Something like this you’re looking at about 80 hours of work per panel.

NSI: And then there are multiple panels too. Converted to dollar amounts, you’re looking at how much?

BD: Well depending on the level of design, there are five levels, you’re looking around about anywhere between say 200 to 450 dollars per square yard. Yeah, a lot of people actually do powder rooms because they can’t afford to put it anywhere else. But then it’s sad because it’s locked away in a little tiny room and the clients will say “you know we should have put it in a more visible place”.

NSI: What about the moisture in a powder room?

BD: Well this stuff can take a bit of water. You can actually wipe it with a damp cloth. You’ve got to remember that when this is manufactured and when it goes up as well, it’s completely saturated. Obviously you’re not going to go through a lot of water against it, but it will dry. Also, we’ve got a finish here that’s very waterproof. Then we have the embroidery. (This section tops them all as far as impressiveness.) And this is all hand-done.

NSI: So this must require even more hours of work than the chinoiserie right?

BD: Yes, and that’s also reflected in the price. Our silks lend themselves to tight embroidery, so you’ll have little tiny bits and pieces and a fully embroidered panel will be about 1100 dollars per square yard.

NSI: (We lean in to examine one of the little flowers that would be a tiny fraction of one panel. Just the one flower seems to have five different colors in it that blend seamlessly together.) Is this color variation painted onto the embroidered thread or is each color a different color thread?

BD: They’re different color threads. There are 950 different colors of threads to choose from and, well actually I can show you… (He pulls out a sort of notebook with each page covered in samples of shiny thread organized in gradients of each color.) So these are our thread families. So you can actually say ‘take family 57 numbers 2, 3 and 4’ and then you’ll know that they’ll blend together quite nicely. You can also specify stitching light to dark or dark to light. This makes communication to the Chinese artists a little easier,
obviously things can get lost in translation quite easily. Yes, ‘Chinglish’ is a wonderful language (laughs as he turns the page again). And then we have the stripes.

NSI: What do you think about these designs?

BD: Well, I think they are incredibly versatile. You really can use them in all areas. You can hang things on the walls over them as well, there’s no design there to overpower and overcomplicate things. Some people do kind of go crazy, and that’s obviously making a big statement when you walk into a room, but it can work sometimes. We can custom color and design these things so if you want it a certain way, we’ll give you three or four samples back with different layouts, different shadings and everything for you to choose from. We now what we’re doing with these, we’ve done a lot of them. Again, with the stripes, these are all hand stitched with ten or twelve threads of silk twisted together. (Benjamin poses in front of some of Fromental's stripes at the top of this page.)

For the next 30 minutes or so we are oohing and aahing to no end as he unrolls panel after panel of increasingly gorgeous designs in front of us, broken occasionally by Nancy speculating about how she can incorporate them into her designs for her clients’ dining rooms, foyers, and other options. The photography below gives some idea but certainly does not do the vibrant colors and luminous silks enough justice.

These colors are incredibly vibrant in person, and the texture that the thousands and thousands of threads add to the fabric is not really visible in this photo.

This design uses metallic thread that adds both shine and texture to the silk. Overall it is a combination of embroidery and painting.

You can see from this how each light burst is unique and nothing in the design is repeated in the same panel.

This design is very interesting. It looks like it could be some kind of rare wood or stone, but it still has the refined artistic feeling that the other designs do. This particular panel had a bit of metallic shine to it.

his picture does not do justice to the statement that this panel makes. It is actually made of a high quality black glitter and it sparkles as much as you would imagine glitter would!

Fromental

Unit 103, The Old Gramophone Works
The Saga Centre, 326 Kensal Rd
London W10 5BZ

Tel: +44(0)20 8960 8899
Fax: +44(0)20 7681 2343
Email: info@fromental.co.uk