“I call it a punked-up version of history,” says Maxine Hall as she admires her dramatic wallpaper, lining the red-carpeted stairway of her Derby home. Viewed from a distance it has an abstract feel, but draw close and intriguing elements from the past emerge from the velvety-black depths. There’s the famous carved imp which peers down inside Lincoln Cathedral, a “netsuke deity”, a flash of butterfly wing and a bird skull, glowing like relics revealed on a river bank.
This painterly effect draws on digital skills which Hall has developed since studying photography at the University of Westminster in the late 80s. “I was their first student to specialise in digital imagery. I sensed that technology was going to change everything.” After college she worked as a fine artist and university lecturer until, in 2012, she “took the mid-life plunge” and set up her home furnishings business, Blackpop. “I’d always worked digitally, mixing graphics and photography. It struck me that wallpaper and textiles would be the perfect canvases.” A first collection of “elegantly distressed, non-chocolate-boxy” designs led to commissions from shops and restaurants. In 2015 a collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, inspired by X-ray imagery of the museum’s Tudor portraits, won a best product award at Decorex.
All the designs begin life in her studio, tucked under the eaves of the terraced house she bought 17 years ago with her partner, Paula Moss, an artist and Blackpop’s studio director. “The arts and crafts bones of the house appealed to our imagination,” says Moss. “And it was all we could afford at the time,” laughs Hall.
Over time, the couple have put their epoch-mixing seal on the interior, juxtaposing Gothic paint hues with mid-century lighting, swapping carpet for time-worn floorboards and offsetting stained-glass windows with abstract paintings for an Edgar Allan Poe-meets-Jackson Pollock effect.
“We’ve made changes when funds allowed,” Hall continues, pointing to the kitchen, which is cupboard-free, inspired by the couple’s rustic cottage in Spain. Provisions are stored in the original pantry. The solid-looking worktops were made from inexpensive floor tiles; the gleaming metro tiles are another thrifty cheat. “Our builder cut squares into rectangles because at the time it was hard to find an affordable version.” In the dining room, the curvy Hans Brattrud chairs were an eBay steal. “Paula started bidding at midnight and wouldn’t stop until she’d won,” says Hall. The dramatic wallpaper, a recent design inspired by a New York jazz club, sits well with a painting by local artist Lewis Noble. In the sitting room, where the curvy art deco sofas travelled with Moss from her previous home, the pendant was handblown by Curiousa & Curiousa, based in nearby Wirksworth. “There’s a great tradition of making things here which stretches back to the Industrial Revolution,” says Moss.
“We don’t acquire things for the sake of it,” insists Hall, as we plunge into the Gothic shadows of the hallway where a stained-glass door, salvaged from neighbours, replaced the “awful” plastic one. The oak card-filing cabinet was rescued from the Derbyshire Records office where Moss was artist in residence. A Foscarini Bit 1 lamp, found in London in the 90s, glows on the landing. Upstairs, the brooding black fireplace in the bedroom is offset by an Edwardian wardrobe, a present from Moss’s father, an antiques dealer. Next door, a 70s chair was reinvented with a Blackpop fabric inspired by a portrait of Henry VII.
“I’ve always been fascinated by pattern-making,” says Hall. She traces her creative DNA to her father, Mike Hall, who was chief engine designer at Cosworth. “One of my earliest memories is of crawling and being transfixed by the swirls on the carpet. At school, girls weren’t allowed to do woodworking or technical drawing and I’d gaze into the workshops, wishing I could be there. When I was 13, I decorated my room with newspaper, adding layers of postcards and concert tickets.”
She is looking forward to her next collaboration: a collection inspired by material at Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. Soane, architect of the Bank of England, delighted in plundering the past for his designs; an approach which resonates with Hall. “I subscribe to the postmodern philosophy. There are no new ideas – it is all about mixing up the familiar to make it appear unfamiliar.”
