Interview - Polly Taylor Designs

Nature-Inspired Home Decor

Bound to her hometown of Devon, England - for its natural beauty and elegance - graduate designer, Polly Taylor's days are filled with a compulsive need to satisfy a creative void. She has a passion for up-scaling antiquity finds in her hometown's many secondhand shops. Once she's discovered her next project she begins to collate the materials that will be used to transform it.

"I'm from a vibrant town called Totnes, in Devon, the beautiful landscapes surrounding me often inspiring my work. I studied interior Textile Design at Somerset College in Taunton, which enabled me to find my own particular style. I have always been creative, with a passion for bright color. Using and experimenting with color is always my main focus when I'm designing."

Tie-dye accented cushions are the product Polly's taste for vibrant, striking colors that reflect a place where she spends the majority of her time - her carefully-tended garden. She typically begins by drawing directly onto the material to get an idea of the artistic direction she's going in before painting or dyeing the fabric.

"Everything is handmade, I often start by drawing first to get an idea of what I want to achieve, and then design from there. My use of colour is spontaneous and at the same time considered."

The inspiration behind her choice of color is drawn from the rich pigments of her favorite flowers. Her design aesthetic is quite raw and has an unfinished, unrefined look that reflects the beauty of nature's imperfections - each cushion is laden with a scattered block-color mosiac.

"I draw my inspiration from a lot of things, but mostly landscapes from a bird's-eye view. I get a lot of colour inspiration from films and movies too! "

She uses a range of different artistic effects including, splattered paint, multi-colored silhouettes and strips of overlapping dye. She uses fibre-reactive procion dyes the are specially-designed for cellulose-based materials like cotton, providing a protective coat and sheen-like surface finish.

"I paint and dye my cushions at my home in Totnes. I use natural fabrics where possible such as cottons and silks. The dyes I use are water-based."

Polly is a fiend for subtle details and this is channeled into every aspect of her work, from the type of color to its application. She appreciates the unexpected nuances that develop in her work, which give each piece a unique touch. The feel of the fabric helps to guide her vision and contributes a lot to the design element of her work. Her bespoke collection is also speckled with fine art paintings that complement her home decor range. She plans to start screenprinting her designs in the feature and expanding her product range.

"My products are always bespoke, one-off designs. I like the idea that creating something once, perfectly, is enough. My products are bold, bright, colorful, original. I'm going to produce a screen-printed collection soon which I'm very excited about as the process of screen-printing is something I really enjoy."