Texture and Creation: The fluid strokes of Ronan Bouroullec’s colourful pen drawings have provided the inspiration for a collaboration with Kvadrat, featuring three new textiles
The first time that Stine Find Osther encountered Ronan Bouroullec’s cerebral drawings, she experienced a deep connection to them. In fact, the vice president of design at Danish textiles company Kvadrat was so riveted by the nuanced, vivid artworks that often pop up in international galleries (this spring, for example, many of them appeared in Dessins Quotidiens, an exhibition presented by Villa Noailles at Hôtel des Arts TPM in Toulon, France) that she “had this dream of unfolding their potential”, she recalls. “The drawings are so intuitive, and I was in love with the idea of capturing those feelings on our upholsteries.”
Bouroullec and his brother Erwan, the visionaries behind their eponymous Paris design studio, are well steeped in the Kvadrat universe, having conceived everything from industrial-inspired showrooms in Copenhagen and Stockholm to such innovative products as the interlocking fabric tile concept Clouds and the Ready Made Curtain system for the brand.
Over the last four and a half years, Find Osther was particularly euphoric about bringing a trifecta of meditative patterns to life that delicately reinterpret, rather than directly replicate Bouroullec’s artistic oeuvre. “They all have the same starting point, but the three textiles are so different from each other. The materials and colours change their personalities and how each one looks on furniture,” she explains. “They are like a family. They are not fighting against but supporting each other.”
This harmonious brood includes Alle, virgin wool (rounded out with 8% nylon) emblazoned with three-dimensional yarns that evoke the fine strokes of Bouroullec’s felt-tipped pens in an earthy terracotta hue and a range of neutrals and crisp blues. In contrast to Alle, which exhibits a certain calming maturity, as Find Osther puts it, are the subtly graphic Sone and Tero Outdoor. Crafted from 100% post-consumer recycled polyester, “they are energetic in their language and a bit sporty,” she adds.
Sone, which stands out with bright shades of green and yellow, for instance, is characterised by a tactile, multidirectional motif reminiscent of landscapes, while Tero Outdoor showcases intersecting cool-toned jacquard woven lines that express desirable depth. Surprisingly soft for a textile that is robust enough for alfresco settings, it’s also a beacon of sustainability, resistant to chlorine and seawater yet constructed without the poisonous gas-inducing fluorocarbons associated with water-repellent technology.
An attractive element of abstraction permeates Bouroullec’s fluid drawings, and that sensibility also translates to the fabrics. “Maybe when you look at one it reminds you of flying over Europe and seeing fields below; maybe I see something else,” Find Osther elaborates. “I like that openness. It allows room for each independent human being to imagine what’s behind the drawing.”
Print-covered fabrics can be challenging, say, for sofas and chairs, points out Find Osther, because the patterns need to be expansive, in dialogue with the pieces of furniture they swath. One of the strengths of this collection, then, she shares, is “that even when you cut into the fabrics, they keep changing. There is a shine to them that only gets more beautiful as time goes by, so the story doesn’t end with the textile, but with the people who are using it.”
This organic evolution is fitting, given how personal the project is for Bouroullec, who has been drawing since he was a child, and how it illuminates another soulful dimension of his creativity that is separate from his design work. “It’s a precious thing to collaborate with Ronan on something so close to him,” says Find Osther, “to show the world something so private.”
Images by Kvadrat, portrait by Inga Sempé
As featured in OnOffice 163, Summer 2023. Read a digital version of the issue for free.
