Getting Personal: Harlequin teams up with Henry Holland for a creative collaboration inspired by clay

“The starting point was our ceramic work, but it evolved. I was able to bring in so many personal reference points.” Henry Holland has staged something of a takeover at Focus/24, with his new fabrics and wallcoverings for Harlequin featured on the Design Club’s main stage and around the club, as well as in the South Dome Cafe and even on the lifts.

As he explained at Focus/24’s opening Conversations in Design talk, with ELLE Decoration‘s Ben Spriggs and Sanderson Design Group’s Claire Vallis (pictured above), Holland gave up a career in fashion and found solace during the pandemic in ceramics. His new hobby fairly quickly presented itself as not just a balm (“I love the meditative, therapeutic nature of it”) but a new work direction. Now his tableware, lighting and other accessories – made in the distinctively marbled nerikomi technique – have provided inspiration for fabrics and wallpapers, too.

Vallis said that Holland “has such a different viewpoint, and a real energy,” explaining at the talk how he dived into the Sanderson archives to seek further inspiration for the collection. The palette is based on the colour of clay, both glazed and unglazed, pulling together all the disparate influences. ‘Ludaix’ and ‘Ludaix Velvet’ are based on an archive document that reminded the designer of an early-20th-century wallcovering at his late mother’s home in France, while ‘Potshop’ presents a graphic assemblage of Holland’s ceramic pieces in silhouette.

Moirés also feature heavily – so much so that they’ve been given their own separate book. “I love moiré and the way it’s being seen in interiors a lot more,” said Holland at the talk. “I remember my parents had peach and baby blue cushions in it.” The watery design has an obvious aesthetic affiliation with the nerikomi ceramics, but it’s also a way of adding a more toned-down element to a collection that is positively effervescent in its joy of pattern: as Holland says, “it’s plain without being plain.”

Harlequin, First Floor, South Dome