New Work: Ink Collection for KnollTextiles
When Pentagram’s Abbott Miller was commissioned to design a new collection of wallcoverings for KnollTextiles—his second for the manufacturer—he looked to material close at hand: drawings and patterns of ink he found himself working with on paper.
“I was looking at the way ink moves across paper, and imagined it running down the walls,” says Miller.
Launching this week, the new collection, called Ink, uses liquid movement as a point of departure for a series of highly graphic patterns. The idea behind the design came from experimentation; starting with a single drop of ink, Miller created hundreds of studies that yielded drops, branch-like forms, and loosely formed letters. This was the genesis of the collection’s three patterns, aptly named Drip, Drop and Run.
The new collection follows the highly successful Grammar wallcovering series Miller created for Knoll in 2006. Grammar was inspired by typography and consisted of geometric patterns based on a series of overlapping, intermingling letters. The Ink collection is more loose, organic and handmade, but also has a digital element—the collection was created by digitally composing the studies into patterns.
Miller says, “As a medium, ink has a quality that is free and organic, but a graphic pattern is tight and controlled. The new collection plays with this dichotomy.”
Miller is the first designer to be commissioned with a second collection from KnollTextiles. Founded by Florence Knoll in 1947, the company offers fabrics for the office and home, combining beauty and function in the Modernist tradition.
“Abbott has an incredible sense of pattern,” says KnollTextiles Creative Director Dorothy Cosonas. “He is able to take the world of graphic design and translate it into wallcoverings that are at once bold, modern and timeless.”
Produced in an array of colors, Ink is printed on RECORE, a vinyl wall covering made with 30% recycled content that is Greenguard certified for low chemical emissions. The collection is designed for commercial and institutional applications, like hotels and schools, but may also be used in crossover applications like private residences. It is available for purchase on the KnollTextiles website.
Applied to walls, the three patterns—Drip, Drop and Run—create unique interiors that combine the free-flowing nature of the liquid line with the straight lines of architecture.
Drip is a series of organic, interconnected letters, created by steering wet ink into letterforms.
With Drop, Miller began with a droplet of ink, which was then digitally reproduced to create a kind of stripe. The pattern has depth and dimension on the wall.
Run started as a few ink drops that Miller steered across the page; again the design was scanned, and the resulting pattern—which reads as a modern toile—was created.
