Tracy Kendall Lecture

A few weeks ago I went to a lecture by Tracy Kendall. Tracy Kendall studied a BA in Fine Art, specialising in Screen Printing. She mainly works with wallpapers and she originally started producing her own wallpapers for her own kitchen at home. She found that all the wallpapers that she liked were far too expensive so she decided to make her own. Her first were her Knife Fork and spoon papers. At this time Kendall was working as a technician at the Royal College practising digital printing. Luckily for her the royal college held an exhibition of all their students work, and she was able to exhibit her first wallpapers. The editor of Elle Decoration, who was visiting the exhibition, spotted her work and this lead to her papers being featured in the magazine. This is what really set her career off.

Tracy Kendall’s inspirations come from everywhere, magazines, photos, found objects, fashion, papers etc. She loves working with organic things. She describes how picking up a single feather off the street and then asking questions about this feather. She explains how asking questions all the time is imperative when being a designer.

Kendall attends trade Fairs on a regular basis in Milan, London and New York. She believes this is the best way of promoting her work. She notices the fact that male designers dominate the interiors industry and their designs are aimed at a masculine market with a masculine colour palette. To combat this and to appeal to the male market, Kendall uses a lot of Black and White in her work and also minimalism is a theme that runs throughout her designs.
Kendall has recently hired an agent in New York in order to sell her work over there. Clients have included Whistles, and she has also been approached by Burberry and Sex and The City to design and produce wallpapers and window features.

Tracy Kendall is well known for using many different techniques. Most of the time she tends to do the work herself or with the help of an assistant. However for things like laser cutting and digital printing she takes them to specialist companies. When working out prices for her work she always asks the question “How fast can I produce it?” and then works out how much she would be able to produce.