PEOPLE WITH PASSION

Melissa Whites studio is a corner of Elizabethan England in Hastings

Secrets of our patterned past

By reproducing Elizabethan wall paintings on traditional fabrics, Melissa White hopes to start a design renaissance all of her own
FEATURE NATASHA GOODFELLOW PHOTOGRAPHS POPPY BERRY

Brushes with the past

O
Melissa begins by sketching out the details

n the top oor of a former brewery tucked away o the High Street in Hastings Old Town, Melissa White is hard at work. Outside, gulls call and the drizzle and sea spray has turned the grey slate roofs a dull green, but inside is a world of pattern and colour. Surrounded by linens covered in Elizabethan designs of trailing vines, pastel trellises and endearingly monstrous gures, Melissa gracefully adds a ourish to her latest cloth painting a glorious, free-owing tree of life, populated with snails, butteries and fruit. Around her, the walls shimmer with vivid frescoed panels, while on the battered wooden shelves printed boxes spill their bounty of beads, tassels and shocks of ribbon.

in pattern. Big, graphic designs were painted either directly onto the walls, or, if you had a bit more money, onto stiened cloth, which would have been nailed oor to ceiling to the beams. Any exposed brickwork or space inbetween the ceiling beams would have borne more pattern still.

Inspired by Shakespeare
Much of Melissas knowledge and indeed her passion for the period stems from a chance meeting in 1996 with David Cutmore, one of the countrys leading experts in Elizabethan interior design. David asked her to assist him on a project he was working on at Shakespeares Birthplace Museum in Stratfordupon-Avon, and over the next ve years, Melissa worked as part of a small team creating immense, vivid cloths to be hung in four rooms of the house. The learning curve was steep, partly because original reference material is so scarce. As Puritanism swept the country after Queen Elizabeths reign, the luscious wall paintings

A passion for pattern

Everyone thinks 16th-century houses were all exposed beams and whitewashed walls, says Melissa, but it wasnt like that at all. Every bit of the walls and the ceilings would have been covered

A junk-shop chair transformed by pattern

disappeared under whitewash or wooden panelling. Wall cloths were once commonplace and had regularly cropped up in wills and account books of the time. Shakespeare mentioned them frequently, most notably in Henry IV when Mistress Quickly recommends them to Falsta as preferable to y-bitten tapestries. However, their fate was no better. When people moved, wall cloths were either cut up and reused, or they rotted away over time. But rather than being perturbed by the dearth of original material, Melissa was intrigued. Because so little is known about Elizabethan designs, with every new thing I discover, I feel as if Im being let into a secret world. That sense of mystery appeals. The team at Stratford tracked down original wall paintings that Shakespeare was likely to have seen, and spent hours analysing them to recreate the colours and work out how the designs would have been transferred onto the cloth. Something just clicked in my DNA, says Melissa. I started

looking at these intense, rich patterns and how they were executed and suddenly I could picture myself in that world. It was as if someone had opened a door into the 16th century. Inspired by this new world, Melissa spent years criss-crossing the country with David recreating these designs in private houses and historic buildings, from Blakesley Hall in Birmingham to Swan House, a chic Hastings B&B, until, last summer she set up her studio. I was tired of travelling, she says, and wanted

I started looking at these intense rich patterns and suddenly I could picture myself in that world. It was as if someone had opened a door into the 16th century
to nd a way of doing this work at home. I needed to create a tangible object, rather than just a paint eect, that would hold its own in a contemporary interior. At rst, she concentrated on small items one-o commissions for curtains or blinds, painted cushions and highly decorative, distressed frescoed panels inspired by 1950s and Japanese designs but now her ambitions have swelled. She and David are working together on large, soft, painted cloth panels to use as wall hangings, curtains or throws. Their rst Anticke Collection consists of ve striking black and white patterns popular in the 16th century and sure to cause a stir in the 21st. The patterns are classied by their various subject matter: there are renaissance styles, also known as grotesques, which imitate paintings found in Italian
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PEOPLE WITH PASSION

Anything from an old box to a beautiful ribbon can spark Melissas creativity

Because the patterns were all hand painted, the lines almost hold the signature of the artist. Sometimes theyre delicate, sometimes crude
medallions, she laughs. Each pattern in their collection is painstakingly copied from an original source be it photographs of a surviving wall painting as in the case of Kent Multivine or from a watercolour of a building before it was demolished, as with Sa ron Walden Trellis. The designs are reproduced in their original colours and size. Weve tried experimenting with the scale of the pattern, says Melissa, but we realised it just didnt work because theyd got it absolutely right. hold the signature of the artist, says Melissa. Sometimes theyre extremely delicate and sometimes theyre really crudely done, but I try to stick very closely to the originals, to incorporate the mistakes and the wonkiness its part of their charm. In the future, Melissa and David plan to introduce a new collection each season. Colour will be the next big wave, says Melissa. The stretched painted cloth we did for Shakespeares birth-room is black with pink owers. Its so luxurious, it almost looks like a velvet in softer cloth thatll be exquisite.
For more information on Melissas work, call 07792 067548 or visit fairlyte.co.uk.

caves; Moresque styles with intertwining geometrical elements echoing the Alhambra; heraldic designs, and gure subjects depicting battles and religious scenes. Many have their origins in Italy whose renaissance preceded ours by a hundred years. Repeatedly copied as they were transferred from place to place on their slow journey to England, they

underwent a sort of design Chinese Whispers, says Melissa. If you look at the Golden Cross Grotesque we did for Shakespeares Birthplace Museum which is an exact copy of an original wall painting you dont know whether the weird monsters were beautiful putti in the Italian original, if the animals were meant to be horses, or if the mens breasts started out as

Signature style
Another key element is the quality of the brushstrokes. Because the patterns were all hand painted, the lines almost

RECREATING THE ROOMS AT SHAKESPEARES BIRTHPLACE MUSEUM

ORIGINALITY IS KEY

For the upstairs parlour at Shakespeares Birthplace Museum, the team copied an original wall painting found in what was once The Cross Inn in Oxford, which Shakespeare is known to have visited. Its still on display at a pizza restaurant: 8 Golden Cross, Cornmarket Street.

MIXING IT UP

The pigments were closely researched so they matched those used in Shakespeares times. Powdered earth tones, including red ochre, red lead and Naples yellow, were mixed with water to give a paste. This was then added to glue size, kept liquid in a double boiler.

UNBEATABLE PANELS

To make the wall cloths, Melissa and the team had to build huge wooden stretchers with batons and stretch unbleached linen across them. This was then sized with animal skin glue to stiffen it, and then primed with distemper to give a smooth base to paint on top of.

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AN EYE FOR TECHNIQUE

To recreate the design, Melissa had to work out how the design would have been transferred onto cloth. Sometimes you can see where they used templates and where they ipped them over, she says.The character of the original brushstrokes was also closely copied.

ROOM WITH A VIEW

The upstairs parlour in Shakespeares Birthplace Museum is just one of four rooms for which the team created wall hangings. The others were Shakespeares birth-room; a downstairs parlour and a dining room. To nd out more, visit shakespeare.org.uk or call 01789 204016.

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