Flora and Fauna Dominate at Deco Off
Temperatures hovered around freezing, but indoors nature was in luxuriant bloom for the 6th edition of Paris Deco Off. The annual five-day open-house event, scheduled to coincide with Maison&Objet’s January fair, is held in the showrooms of some 100 French and international luxury design and decoration brands. All along the streets of the city’s double-barreled Decotown—clustered around the rue du Mail on the Right Bank and Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the Left—new fabrics, wall coverings and accessories were ablaze with trees, leaves, fronds, flowers, feathers, butterflies and birds in bright pastels and hot tropical colors.
Harlequin’s Amazilia collection—named for a genus of hummingbirds native to Peru and Ecuador—ranges from delicate multicolored birds in flight to oversized and stylized flowering vines. Manuel Canovas finds inspiration in tales of 17th-century India, then takes a hot-air balloon trip to ancient Serendip for a brilliantly colored parrots-and-peonies print inspired by an 18th-century hand-painted silk. Lorca books a passage to India with the Chandor collection, in bold velvet stripes and large-scale stylized and embroidered paisleys, while Osborne & Little’s Pasha collection of Turkish-inspired delights includes the bold floral Tulipan, whose butterflies have ocelot-spotted wings.
Rubelli stays close to home in Venice, birthplace of the original firm (1835) and of Lorenzo Rubelli (1847), who took it over in 1889. The new 2015 Venezia collection is anchored by a black-and-white wall covering view of the Grand Canal adapted from an early 18th-century etching, along with a cotton-blend Toile de Venise and a sheer Voile de Venise, both printed with details of early 18th-century Venetian engravings. (A percentage of Venezia collection sales will go to the restoration fund of the American organization Save Venice.)
Dedar’s eclectic new collection plays with tribal motifs, tie-dye effects, chambray weaves and some discreet metallic sheen; the jacquard Short Cuts resembles tangled ribbon remnants, the elegant Alaya pattern is African-inspired, and the vividly multicolored, digitally printed, cotton and linen Margaritas is a delightful riff on American Abstract Expressionism.
Scion’s prints by designer Hannah Bowen, derived from lino-cuts, give a handmade look to stylized trees, leaves, hedgehogs, squirrels and hares. And at Elitis, handcrafted wall coverings in natural plant materials include tree bark, bamboo, palm fiber and a surprising patchwork of vegetable-dyed papier maché.
