We speak to textile designer Jessie de Salis whose bold and bright fabrics born in a Somerset barn are injecting lashings of colour into homes around the country
“I take a lot of inspiration from plants, the natural world, and the ancient Greek and Byzantine worlds for my designs,” says Jessie de Salis. “Those sources are just so beautiful. I also find the Bauhaus movement really inspiring.” Soft green pea plant tendrils curling around bed heads, Bauhaus-inspired napkins adorned with vivid blue and soft pink circles and glorious sunny yellow petals spread gracefully across a table. Jessie de Salis – a textile designer putting bright and bold designs front and centre via traditional methods of screen printing in a beautiful converted barn studio in Somerset – has been hand-crafting patterns onto organic fabric since 2020’s lockdown.
“What I really like about printing the designs myself is that I think it makes me a better designer,” she explains. “You start to care about every single colour, because each one matters, and it’s important to get those colours just right so everything works together.
I just love textiles that are bold and bright. I think they look really striking in a space. For lampshades and cushions, people tend to love bright colours. For curtains, though, I’ve noticed people usually go for slightly more muted tones. They often choose two shades of green, for example, rather than something like orange or yellow.”
The fine print
Jessie has dedicated the last few years of her life to the art of screen printing fabric, along with cousin Alice Jacoby who has been training alongside her. Jessie’s grandparents were farmers and let her use an old stable previously used for storage.
“When I first found it, it was completely full of stuff,” Jessie recalls. “But space is really important for the textile printing process. I’m really lucky as it would have been so difficult to find a space like this. The barn has this beautiful glass roof, and the light is just gorgeous”.
Hand printing requires a lot of set up time. Colours are hand mixed, screens are prepared and the design aligned. Behind every two minutes of printing is 20 minutes of prep. Having started screen printing from the kitchen table, Jessie’s experience in digital printing sowed the seeds that evolved into a fascination with manual textile decoration.
“Digital printing wasn’t as satisfying; I really liked the hands-on aspect of screen printing. The colours, the imperfections – it felt so much more alive. No two prints are exactly the same and I love that.”
After practising with smaller prints in an old shed at her boyfriend’s parents’ house in Cornwall while lockdowns persisted, one metre at a time, Jessie learned how to properly print textiles and started getting commissions. Now she needed to know how to successfully scale her business up. “I called my old lecturer and asked, “How do I do this?” She told me she was selling her own long print table. So, I went up to Cumbria, where she was based and spent the day with her. She showed me how to use the big screens, how to register them and all the technical stuff. Since then, it’s been a learning process.”
Planet-friendly fabrics
It’s been about three years since Jessie took on the studio, and it’s been a lot of work – getting commissions, figuring out the craft, and learning how to manage everything.
One of Jessie’s guiding principles for her business is to “tread lightly on the Earth”. While she acknowledges that no textile production is perfect when it comes to its impact on the environment, she has tried to prioritise processes that ease the effects.
“My fabric comes from Lithuania – it’s this beautiful, high-quality organic linen. I found a really lovely supplier that offers this soft, floppy linen and it’s environmentally friendly as the mill runs on renewable power, which is important to me. Also, all of the inks I use are water-based, which is a big plus for the environment.”
Of course, it helps that in terms of design production, everything is done by hand, rather than energy-consuming machines. Jessie and Alice also released a collection where every element of the product was second-hand, using offcuts, repurposing rope for piping and thread from second-hand suppliers. “We spent ages doing that and it was really amazing to create a collection completely from waste.”
At the time of writing, Jessie has nine fabric designs for sale on the online shop, as well as a number of cushions and lampshades waiting to brighten up homes around the country. But Jessie also loves taking bespoke orders, with customised print designs in shapes and colours of the clients’ choice.
“Commissions are great. I did one for a couple who were getting married, and they ordered 120 metres of fabric (pictured, top right). This was when I was just starting up my studio, and it was such an amazing commission because my partner and I printed it together, and it really helped me figure out how to scale up and print this much fabric efficiently. “The design was based on a Gloriosa plant, which was a special plant for the bride – it was her mum’s favourite. The bespoke pieces are always the enjoyable because you’re designing for someone’s specific space, and you’re working with their personal tastes. I also did a Tree of Life design for another commission, where a family picked all the birds, each one with its own meaning and story.”
Jessie explains how she thrives on the fun process of creating designs, especially for someone’s home – and the heritage craft of manual screenprinting means she’s able to be creative with concepts, but then also practice precision and neatness when it comes to placing the designs on the fabric. “You have to align everything just right, and when it works, it’s so satisfying”. Jessie loves Bristol’s “creative and colourful attitude”, which is closely aligned with her own endeavours, “It’s the kind of place where a lot of makers, designers, and artists want to live”. And what better place to exhibit local art that also celebrates traditional handcrafted skills than your own home?
jessiedesalis.com
