Poodle & Blonde's Kierra Campbell selects her top Zone Arts Picks

What an absolute pleasure to have Kierra Campbell, Tottenham resident and one half of our favourite interiors brand, Poodle & Blonde, select her favourite art works from the Zone Arts collection. 

Kierra (right) set up Poodle & Blonde with bizz partner and best pal Whinne Williams (left). The brand has a proud fun factor, is fashion influenced and has a modern take on the interiors world. Their funky fabrics and quirky print designs (inc our fave ‘Tottenham Dalmation’) feature on a range of cushions, wallpaper, lampshades and accessories, and are always cropping up on Instagram’s most followed interior accounts!

Here are her favourite Zone Arts picks, alongside a bit about why she was drawn to each art work. She's also shared her top products from her own brand, check it out below:  

1. George Chapman, 'Roma Cinema' 2013

I always find architecture to be a thing of beauty, partly because there’s a mini interiors obsessed minion inside me, so anything adjacent to that catches my eye, but also I like how story telling it is. It’s very suggestive of an era, a climate, a country, a culture too. This print to me is an image of somewhere I want to be, hiding away at the top watching the world go by. It’s a print I imagine would create a calming environment in a room. 

2. George Chapman, 'Summit Club', 2019

This is another one by George Chapman, my plan was not to pick two by the same artist but if I’m honest I would purchase both of these works! Primary colours are so great for creating depth and character within a space and this one I’m in love with. I’m not sure what this image is depicting but I see the sea, I see human form, I see the city and it reminds me of live music posters too. I like any print that makes me think and create my own interpretation.

3. Juliette Ezavin, 'Gainsbourg she told me' 2020

I grew up with my grandma in a Jamaican household and this style of art feels so familiar. We had similar pieces on the wall and the few story books we had that had black characters also included illustrations in a similar style. I like to bring my heritage in to my home so you’ll always see snippets that link back to the Caribbean and this is something I would love to have hanging on my walls. It’s abstract styles makes it really enjoyable to stare at, I can see all the different strokes and notice the perfect imperfections in the design, I’m sure the more you look at it the more details you notice. Beautiful. 

4. Rachie Campbell, 'Goldie' 

Red is possibly my favourite colour and the human form is beautiful but the female form is normally the one on display, so it’s a real treat to come across a modern piece that’s glorifies the male form, I love a peachy bum. Similar to certain body parts on a woman that are always censored, I think men’s balls are often hidden 😂 It’s the part that “we’d rather not see” (apparently) so I am all for that being included in this painting, it’s actually my favourite part!

5. Elise Mendelle, 'Social Isolation 7', 2020

If I buy art it has to mean something to me and be a reflection of my world. Covid, social distancing, lockdown these are all things I’ll tell my daughter about when she is older and and she’ll probably half believe me and make me feel really old for it! The world's getting back to normal and it’s already feeling like a distant memory so a piece to remember this wild time is worth investing in and it’s really important to remember because it changed the world.

 6. Mathew Tudor, 'Portrait. November 2019', 2019 

Some of the other images I’ve picked make me think of objects, or places but this one just triggers emotion. I find it relatable even though I’ve no idea what he’s thinking, but I know I’ve felt it too and I want to find out more. If this were in my home I feel like every time I walk past it I’d wonder, which I really like. It's also just very beautiful, a style I can’t say I’ve seen before. Of all the pieces I’ve picked, this is my favourite.

Kierra's favourite pieces from the Poodle & Blonde Collection 

Poodle Parlour in Pink Paws Wallpaper 

A lot of our followers for Poodle and Blonde are poodle lovers first and interiors lovers second so we wanted to create a wallpaper full of poodle faces, but it was important that it looks truly great as this is the type of design that could easily look a bit naff. So to do this we collaborated with 2 artists who painted for us 5 different poodles to create this design. Two of which are Whinnie's own poodles Brian and Peachy. What we thought would be a great talking point and purchased by a really niche customer base has turned out to be one of our best sellers.

Tea Room in Camel Wallpaper 

With every collection innovation is so important to us. We don’t like to be lazy with our print development and tea room is a great example of how we experiment with different techniques. The wave design that you’re seeing in the background is moire silk that we have captured and created a new, hard to see repeat. Painted on top of the moire are our curved bamboo shapes knitted together. This design was quite hard to get right and took 4 attempts of repainting. We both could see the vision in our minds but getting it down on paper proved difficult. Of this collection Tea Room took the longest to develop but were really happy with the result. It’s one of our best sellers in fabric, it’s perfect for creating really special upholstered pieces  

Lonesome George in Lagoon Wallpaper 

This is a print which we like to call a plain print. A plain print is something that can easily be worked into most concepts without ever being overpowering. My favourite colour is this Lagoon, it is really beautiful, sexy, and in my dream home I'd love an entire sofa to be upholstered in it 

Food Babies in Ivory Wallpaper 

Whinnie said to me ‘right, imagine storks carrying Chinese...' I think we should do this as a print’ I obviously completely trust her because I said yes and so happy I did. The traditional story of storks is that they deliver babies, so we have our storks delivering food babies, lovely bundles of joy. They’re carrying Chinese, Mc Donald’s, and the blue and white bag is either fish and chips or chicken and chips, whatever you fancy! The design process was another long one as Whinnie has to hand embroider each element of the design onto silk, we then had to scan the silk in including the edges to create the illusion of silk dressed walls once the paper is hung. This is by far one of our favourite designs across all products

Money Tree in Original Wallpaper

The idea behind this was inspired by the wallpaper in Del Boys living room which we both love. The addition of using coins on a bamboo themed paper came from Whinnie's grandpa who would throw money in to bushes and his grandchildren believed money really did grow on trees. Grandad Wyndham sadly passed away so this first collection has been named after him. 

 Margate Marble in Emerald Green Bush Wallpaper  

Another plain print, our Margate marble was named after Whinnie's hometown and was the official first design created for Pooodle and Blonde. This colourway was used on the bedroom ceiling of the Location house and was one of the first images that began to circle on social media and get our name out there.

Tottenham Dalmation in Cocoa Wallpaper  

Tottenham Dalmatian was our second official print of the first collection and named after my hometown here in Tottenham. It’s a really simple design and our most popular, I almost can’t imagine this not being our best seller. Whilst it looks simple in theory actually the final design you see is a result of I think four attempts. The spacing, stroke style, stroke direction and intensity all made the difference to it looking and feeling really luxury or really basic. It was a lot of trail and error to remodernize a really standard animal design. We’re really happy with the final result and thank you to everyone who has supported us by buying this when we first launched! 

Chain of fools in Ginger Wallpaper  

This has always been a fav of mine and we are actually about to release three new colourways in this. Chain of fools is a great geometric and perfect for our brand which is inspired a lot by the mid-centruy interiors which used a lot of geometrical prints. This print looks especially great on furniture, it's bold and clean and feels like a true classic

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