SUPPLIER IN FOCUS: RAPTURE & WRIGHT

Founded in 2004 by husband and wife team Peter Thwaites and Rebecca Aird, Rapture & Wright are one of the few remaining British artisan studios to handprint their fabrics and wallpapers. Voted one of the Sunday Times’ Top 30 Designer Makers, they work with the best UK suppliers, adapting age old techniques in clever ways, to make beautiful fabrics and wallpapers.

We love using Rapture & Wrights prints in our interior design projects, as they create designs that work particularly well in The Cotswolds. They have an aesthetic that is inspired by Japanese design, early 20th century design, tribal textiles and the Arts and Crafts period, all of which we love and find ourselves drawn to.

Earlier this month we visited their Cotswold studio, to gain more of an insight into their design and printing process. Discover more below.

WHO ARE RAPTURE & WRIGHT

Rebecca, once a successful graphic designer and Peter, an illustrator working around the world for Interior Designers, decided to move from London fourteen years ago to set up their new venture. Artisans at heart, together they dreamed of turning their brimming portfolio of patterns, designed over the years, into a collection of fabrics and wallpapers. Deciding on The Cotswolds to call home, they set up their studio and haven’t looked back since.

The Rapture & Wright studio, positioned on the outskirts of the picturesque village on Evenlode, is a place where ideas become designs and those designs become beautiful fabrics and wallpapers. Linen is the base fabric, as it is a sustainable textile that needs very little in the way of pesticides or water to grow the flax and no chemicals are needed in the processing. They also use water based inks and have made a substantial investment in a very impressive “wet system” that ensures any liquid waste is rendered harmless.

However, small scale artisan production is time consuming and physically demanding. Rapture & Wright print to order and with up to 90% of their sales coming from fabric designs they have a heavy workload, printing approximately 3,000 meters by hand a year! When you see the work involved you realise this is no easy task.

That said, their small-scale production means they can be flexible and create bespoke colourways at an affordable additional cost. This is a feature that we really like as it means we can make sure that colours work perfectly with other elements in a room such as artwork. They are also happy to customise some of their designs so that they have a fade effect.

Each fabric is personal and subtly different, reflecting the hand of the maker. Far from being trapped by tradition, Rapture & Wright adapt age old techniques in clever ways to make fabrics and wallpapers for contemporary and classical tastes alike. Rebecca and Pete are both modest about their sustainable practise, preferring to be known for the integrity of their designs and their craftsmanship, but it’s that winning marriage of award winning design skills paired with a sustainable ethos that make them such an outstanding design brand that is fit for our times.

DISCOVER THE RAPTURE & WRIGHT PRINTING PROCESS

Initially a design is created the old fashioned way, using simple pencil and paper. This idea is then developed and tested, often using a potato, as this is the quickest and easiest way to try out pattern repeats. Once the design has been developed sufficiently the process moves to the computer where Peter ensures that the pattern repeats are perfectly aligned.

Peter explains how the artwork is then transferred to a screen;  “The new screens are coated by us with a thin layer of light sensitive emulsion and dried in a dark cabinet. The art work is a transparent film with the design drawn, painted or printed onto it with opaque ink. We create these either by hand drawing or cutting the design onto transparent film or scanning our designs onto our computer and sending the finished file away to be printed out onto transparent film.

The design is transferred (etched) onto the screens by exposing the coated screens to a strong light source (the light box) with the artwork between light source and coated screen. The screen is then washed and the areas where the opaque ink has been on the  artwork remains unexposed and so washes out leaving a negative stencil on the screen ready for printing.”

Ready to begin the printing process, the linen is pulled along the padded table. It is then ironed on to the table which has a permanent adhesive on to stop the fabric moving during printing. The screen is then laid over the fabric, paint is added and using a squeegee the paint is forced into the mesh as it is passed between Rebecca and Peter. In order to avoid smudging it is printed with alternate repeats allowing the paint to dry as they move down the length of fabric. To speed the process heat lamps sit above the table and occasional on cold days the hairdryers come out to ensure the paint is dry. To ensure the print is fully cured to the fabric it needs to be either baked or a catalyst is added that accelerates the curing at lower temperatures that can be achieved in the drying room. It then ready to be rolled and delivered. Click the video below to watch the process in action.