Interview: Lula Fabrics

Recently, I visited the Lula Fabrics showroom to take a couple of snaps, and also to interview the brains and style behind Lula, Melissa Kerhoff.


Lula Fabrics is a pretty new venture for you, but you've been involved in textiles and design for a while. Tell us about your background.
I've had a long-term fascination with fabrics. As a schoolgirl, I'd venture into Cape Town on a Saturday morning and buy shwe-shwe fabrics off the market on the Grand Parade, and make them up into into fun baggies, skirts and dresses. My high school artwork was always vibrantly coloured and intricately designed, and so my art teacher suggested a career in textile design. After school, this is what I studied as the Ruth Prowse School of Art.

I started my career in the decor industry at Mavromac, where I got fantastic insight into the world's most beautiful textile collections. I also worked at Home Fabrics, selling their imported ranges, and then at Tessa Sonik, before starting Lula Fabrics in March 2007.


Tell us about the collections you've designed for Lula.
The first collection, Damask and Paisley, was inspired by traditional paisley and damask designs, printed with an Indian block printed feel in soft, romantic, monochromatic colours on sheer linens.

My second range was very graphic and bold, called Delicious Monster Leaf with a co-ordinating stripe and Indian ornamental design. The colourways are both sophisticated and also cheerful, and the fabrics work well in outdoor areas and living rooms.


My latest range is called the New Tribal Collection, and it moves away from the traditional designs I started out with. I've used various linen basecloths and included a bold contemporary stripe.


What's the inspiration behind the New Tribal Collection?
This collection has been brewing since 1996, when I visited Turkey and encountered Suzani textiles for the first time. Suzanis are hand-dyed and embroidered textiles in vivid and intense colours. They come from Uzbekistan, and are a true work of art.

While in London last year, I visited the Haymarket Hotel, where the designer Kit Kemp had upholstered a wing back chair and large square ottoman in Suzanis. These magnificent pieces made me decide it was time to use this long-held inspiration in my own work.

Suzanis have provided inspiration to many other big names, like Christian Fischbacher, Manuel Canovas, Pierre Frey and Robert Kime... and now Lula too!

Who are your design and style icons?
Tricia Guild, for her love of colour and romance, and for her whimsical and sometimes funky design. I also respect and admire the growth of her empire, producing fabrics, gorgeous soft furnishings and bedlinen, as well as her hugely inspirational books!

Pierre Frey, for his panache and fantastic attitude: he produces designs that he loves, and not just what's fashionable or on-trend.

Kathryn Ireland, because her middle name is Melissa... not really! Actually, I feel a kinship with her, as the same things drive us both - the love of family, friends, animals, cosy comfortable living spaces adorned with beautiful fabrics. Her range, like mine, was borne out of her love of fabrics and her passion for beautiful things.


Tell us about a few of your favourite things
I love...
... my daughter Erin's laughter. It comes from her gut and is completely contagious.
... the adoring nature of my cat, Lula-Cuddle-Cat
... my Grandmother's 1940's rose-cut diamond engagement ring, because it symbolises the great love my grandparents shared for 63 years.


What are the plans for the future of Lula Fabrics?
Our website is under construction and will include a blog. Visit www.lulafabrics.co.za and sign up for our newsletter about upcoming events on the Lula calendar.

Knobbly knees

I spotted the enchantingly bumpy legs of this little stool in the corner of a room on a magazine page the other day, but to my disappointment, it was quite uncredited. I am pleased to have tracked it down, and now know not only its name, but its address too.

It's the Palette Dressing Table Stool, and it is made to nestle neatly into the kidney-shaped front of the Palette Dressing Table, while the Peg Chair Stand stands nearby, making polite chit-chat.

This charmingly knobbly all-British trio is designed by Alex Hellum, manufactured by Ercol, and available from Heals.

Bags of worth

Although global market disasters may mean we won't be shopping as much as we used to, we'll definitely be recycling and reusing more, and the ethically right-on bags I've collected together today manage combine shopping and recycling rather beautifully.

First up, the Sling Bag by Cape Town designer Wendren Milford. It's made from a recycled organic jute bag, originally used for the coffee from a Fair Trade farm! That's all the ethical boxes checked, if you ask me! Each bag is unique, and you can see more of them in The Wren's Shop.

The Money Bag Wallet from Etsy seller Chakra Pennywhistle is made from a vintage money bag, and all the wear and tear of its previous incarnation is left intact, but strenthened with patching from the inside. I'd hope that the past life of the money bag might just impact positively on the user's present fortunes!


The Food Mileage Tote from Three Potato Four is perfect for lugging your haul from the farmer's market. The message printed on the cotton canvas bag is there to remind you of the distance between the consumer and the producer, and how those miles all add up.

Give it Bag reuses the polypropeline sacks used to transport salt, rice and beans, making them into sturdy and rather gorgeous bags. They've just launched some new designs, including this backpack. You can buy a Give it Bag bag right here.

Signs and Symbols

In the foreword of Signs and Symbols, the latest in RotoVision's Communicating with Pattern series, Lance Wyman asks what the first sign or symbol is that you remember as a child, and the first you remember really striking you as your taste and sensibility began to develop. If your memories are hazy on this, perhaps this book's lushly illustrated 256 pages will jog it just a bit.

I loved these two spreads, showing symbols designed by Wyman himself, for the Museum of Natural History in New York, and the 1968 Mexico Olympics respectively.


Signs and Symbols covers the use of signs and symbols from our early civilizations, symbols of membership and identity, and how signs and symbols permeate every level of our days - in nature, our domestic spaces, our consumer behaviour and expressions of happiness.


The authors, Mark Hampshire and Keith Stephenson, are experts in the use of signs and symbols themselves. As directors of London design agency Absolute Zero Degrees, they're constantly juggling multiple sign and symbol applications, creating corporate identities, packaging, books, wallpaper, and interiors accessories. They are also co-authors of Circles and Dots, Stripes and Squares for RotoVision.


Signs and Symbols is a picture-rich book, and is perfect to page through in an idle moment. But the interesting choice of topics, full but clear layout, and broad range of source material may very well keep you looking longer than you might have expected, and may even jog a memory or two.

Report from NYC: Open House NY

I have a sneaky habit of peering into people's apartment windows as I walk past. Maybe it's because, growing up in South Africa, homes were surrounded by high security walls, but mainly, I'm fascinated with how people decorate their homes. This weekend I got to indulge my voyeuristic side at Open House New York, an annual programme that opens off-limits sites of cultural and historical interest to the public.

On the programme, New Yorkers could see the inner workings of Subway Substation No. 22 in Brooklyn, we could tour the underground cheese caves of Murray's Cheese in the Village and see how a penthouse in NoHo creates a seamless flow between interior space and roof garden.

Except that I couldn't see any of those. The substation and cheese cave tours filled up on the first day that reservations were available, and the penthouse was closed "due to mechanical failure." A tour of the Metal Shutter Houses with architect Dean Maltz sounded interesting, but when we got there the only things to see were an architectural model and a big hole in the ground!

I must have had bad luck this year because there's ample evidence of some very interesting places on view at the OHNY Flickr pool, all entries in the programme's photo competition. These are some of my favourites.

The New School's Tishman Auditorium posted by Manuela Martin.

Mosaics in the hallwayof the Masonic Grand Lodge posted by Uptick.

Fort Totten posted by Elisa Peimer.

New York Marble Cemetery in the East Village posted by Edenpictures.

Storefront for Art and Architecture posted by Manuela Martin.

Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection posted by edenpictures.

Stairwell in NYU Philosophy Department posted by Manuela Martin.

High Bridge Water Tower, posted by Jesse Chan-Norris.

I did take a very lovely tour of the High Line, an elevated railroad running on the West Side of Manhattan that is no longer in use. We weren't allowed to publish our photos because the section we toured overlooked the Metropolitan Transit Authority's rail yards, itself slated for radical redevelopment. But this is what it looks like on the Friends of the High Line website.

The bottom section of the High Line is being transformed into an inspired-looking series of parks designed by Piet Oudolf. We toured the northern section, still in its overgrown nature-overtakes-city state, which was enchanting. We walked along the crumbling wooden planks through waist-high shrubs and drifts of long, soft grasses. I found myself wishing they could just lay a glass floor over the track to preserve it as is.

The other site that did not disappoint was the Row House Revival in Park Slope, Brooklyn, designed by Coburn Architecture. This elegant home was built in the late 1800s and expanded into the adjacent lot when it was renovated over the past few years.

Decorated in what architect Ward Welch described as a "Federal hip" style, the home is elegant, plush and welcoming. I admired the designers Erin Fearins and Catherine Brophy's restrained colour palette and subtle shifts in texture.

The bedroom in particular was a sanctum of calm, which is just the kind of hideaway I'd like after my day touring New York City's hidden treasures.

Dressing for tea

Browsing through the Selvedge Objects website (what a trove of treasures!), I came across the sweetest little teapot and mug by UK ceramist Linda Bloomfield, all snugly dressed in specially knitted cosies by Ruth Cross. Adorable.

Ancient of glaze

These vessels from LA potter Adam Silverman manage to come across as entirely contemporary, while still feeling like treasures from an archeological dig. See more of these beautiful shapes and glazes at the Atwater Pottery website.


And if you like this and you live in California, there's exciting news for you: Atwater Pottery and Heath Ceramics are teaming up to launch a new retail studio facility in Los Angeles! Read more about it here.

Egg at Bank

Last night Durban's Bank Gallery opened a retrospective exhibition of the work by Egg Designs. The show includes work from the last 6 years as well as new works made in 2008, most of which have never been seen in Durban before.


If I lived nearby, I'd definitely put this top of my list of Things To Do in October. Find Bank Gallery at 217 Florida Road in Morningside, Durban.

TV living

I haven't had a TV of my own for years, but from what I hear, staring at the TV Cushion by Danish outfit, NEON LIVING is probably a lot more amusing, most of the time.

In the dogbox

Although we had a great post about animal-themed furniture recently, I don't think we've ever said anything about the homes of the canine rich and famous. These rather extraordinary porcelain doghouses with platinum details by Marco Morosini for Bosa are available at Wannekes.