.Tracey Kendall .

Graduated with an MA from The Royal College of Art.
Whilst studying Tracey's screen printing and wall decoration were discovered and started her on her path to new and innovative wall paper design. She is now based in London and working on her new wall papers and decorations.

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Tracey Kendall was my favorite lecture, I could just see her in her print studio printing away and attaching buttons to chairs! Tracey often works with organic forms like leaves, feathers and plants, and other items such as 1920's dresses, fabric, sequins, 'giant' french sequins, jigsaw pieces, buttons, text and materials.

This approach is what makes Tracey's style quite unique and innovative, some are based on a straight geometric dotted pattern some are just random. She does like to stick to wall coverings, but has in the past made chairs and lampshades, for clients, competitions and charity. She is obviously inspired by her surroundings as her first published and sold wallpapers were a design for her own kitchen. Using a knife, fork and spoon enlarging them to fit the 2.5m tall paper, every 'piece' accommodated a giant piece of cutlery. This was spotted and soon there was an editorial spread including the wall paper leading to sales of the wallpaper and great exposure. The unusual process of attaching things to the paper before it is hung is achieved with a clothes tagging gun and alot of time and effort. Tracey has students that come and work in her printing studio, helping her with the aattachment of the objects to the paper and printing. Tracey likes to cut out the middle man or has to a couple of times when her suppliers have gone bust or closed down, she actively find the source of the product and problem solved.

Her designs break boundaries and challange convention and even give fire regulations a run for their money, but I get the feeling this is not the main intention of her work, I think just making the wallpapers and playing around with print, ideas and designs seems the motivation behind her work rather than challenging the norm. The question was raised about the appropriateness and the restrictions of some of the material she uses, she answered by telling us that she doesn't see it as a problem as she just makes it and its not up to her who buys it or what people do with it (to a point). Tracey also told us a story about buying two small pieces of lace from a little French flea market (I think), for around £1.50 and then went on to use it as one of her wall paper designs. This design was then picked up by a shop and was used to cover all the wall space and is now sold to the general public from her website along with lots of other lovely designs, in an array of colours, http://www.tracykendall.com/.
"This old £1.50 piece of lace has made me around £50.000"
Oh My Goodness, OK take out the costs and the time accumulated and that's alot of money, an earlier statement that she was lucky and in the right place at the right time seems to be very true in this case. Tracey has the advantage of trend on her side, with her innovative designs and creative exhibitions and trade shows booths, the design savvy are on her tail. Tracey now stocks her wallpaper in John Lewis.

One beautiful exhibition she was involved in was held in an old warehouse with fellow designers, smallish Christmas tree type trees were hung from the celling with plastic transparent bags tied to the trunk containing water to make sure they would last. These trees created paths to openings where the designers product was displayed the work was also hung from the ceilings. Tracy mentioned the smell and the atmosphere at the exhibition. I thought this exhibition was exciting and pretty! walking down paths to the clearings sounds like it would have been an experiencee in itself and walking into the separate designers 'spaces' would have been a nice surprise I think this would also separate the designers but in a good way, having a different experience with the work displayed as opposed to it just being displayed in a large room next to other designers work, it may also effect the time spent looking at certain pieces or designers as it would be a more intimate experience with the work. Tracey relies alot on editorial exposure for her promotion, but also has a website that is used to sell and promote her work further.

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Tracey Kendall travels all over the world for traid shows and research. she has been 'lucky' but she has also worked very hard and her willingness to embrace new technology brings her work up to date and desirable.

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