‘TEXTILE DESIGN THAT CAN TRANSPORT EMOTIONS PLACE TO PLACE IN MOMENTS’

Julie Haslam launched the home accessories company Domestic Bliss in 2003. Originally the business grew from research into new digital technology, which has since revolutionised fabric printing in the Fashion & Textile industry.

In 2002 a two-year residency at the Manchester Metropolitan University gave the opportunity to experiment with this new technology and to develop innovative product ideas. Initially, inspiration for textile design was drawn from a handwritten notebook, which had belonged to the designer’s Grandmother. Her grandparents had been bakers selling home baked bread and cakes for most of their lifetime. This small fragile book included some of the corner shop’s recipes and also several of her grandmother’s shopping lists. The first tea towel to start the collection illustrated one of the shopping lists. This was appropriately named ‘Shopping for Chops’. New digital technology allowed the designer to experiment with proportion and depth of colour to achieve a textile print that highlighted the beauty of hand mark making and gave new life to an object, which for many, would most likely be discarded. This first tea towel has constantly been a favourite for buyers of bespoke design and, like others from the collection, has been an object of discussion from the very beginning.

Since then others have donated pages from family notebooks, which has led to the current collection of 26 tea towels illustrating recipes and other intriguing and nostalgic written material. Each print from the collection is also available as a napkin and a couple have been developed as aprons.

The collection now includes text from further afield including Spain and France. The remarkable factor being that, no matter the language or the simplicity, the work has the power to evoke analogous memories and strong feelings, textile design that can transport emotions place to place in moments.