During he last London Craft Week, leather, textile, and wallpaper retailer Howe at 36 Bourne Street invited local textile artist Gaia Di Paola to set up shop in their store. For the week of May 9th to 15, Gaia did a demonstration where she painted, sketched, and embroidered using an assortment of old and modern Howe textiles. I visited the store in that period and got to learn the procedures she uses to create her one-of-a-kind and beautiful works.
Gaia studied architecture in Rome and worked as a fashion designer for many brands, including Brunello Cucinelli. Later, she honed her technical talents by enrolling in art craft classes at St. Martin's College of Arts & Design, such as Experimental Fashion Drawing and Embroideries, where she discovered a true love for merging art, fashion, and craftsmanship to create distinctive and creative interior products.
Gaia, the designer of the homonymous line is an artist-artisan who displays her creativity and great execution skills by making exquisite pillows, headboards, curtains, and other textile goods.
Gaia di Paola’s collection comprises a variety of pillows and headboards made from one-of-a-kind textiles, some of which are historic, valuable, or hand-dyed. Gaia's ability to blend these many approaches in an uncommon way resulting in a highly modern and dramatic aesthetic.
On the other hand, HOWE Leathers are hand-dyed and varnished after being vegetable-tanned the old-fashioned method using tree bark and water. They only use full grain hides and skins to celebrate the natural grain of the leather with all of its distinctive marks, and their family-run tanneries adhere to the highest possible standards of eco-friendly manufacture.
HOWE Wallpapers is a growing selection of small, bright designs that are proudly manufactured in the United Kingdom. The designs' nostalgic but joyful aesthetic offers them adaptability, making them equally at home in a rustic house or a modern metropolitan setting.
The prints are equally at home in a rustic hamlet or a modern metropolitan setting thanks to their nostalgic but joyful aesthetic.You could find 18th century Dutch hand-dyed linens, ex-military tenting canvas and tarpaulins, vintage flour and grain sacks, or delicately woven French ticking pieces and mattress coverings to the shop.
