Bird on Cage

Fiona Howard is known for designing such contemporary classics as Sanderson’s ‘Dandelion Clocks’ print. A highly-regarded British textile designer trained at Middlesex University, she now works from her beautiful Regency studio overlooking the sea in Brighton, Sussex and from her Los Angeles studio in Venice Beach..

Over the last 25 years she has built an international reputation in home furnishing textile design, working closely with clients, travelling between London, Paris, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2007 she created her own company producing collections of furnishing fabrics, kitchen and homewares, all based on her signature hand-cut lino prints.

Artisanship and traditional tools and skills sit at the heart of Fiona’s work. She meticulously colours handmade Japanese papers to create her distinctive colour palette. Filling numerous sketchbooks with preparatory drawings, she then translates these into repeating patterns. Employing lino print, monoprint, painterly and cut paper techniques, everything is created by hand – nothing is computer-generated – giving each design the quality of fine art. Indeed, many of her textile designs have been framed and exhibited.

Fiona is inspired by an eclectic mix of influences, such as Japanese art, 50s textiles, Indian woodblock prints, the designers Lucienne Day and William Morris, illustrators Edward Bawden and Robert Tavener, exciting finds at antique fairs and beachcombing in Cornwall, travels to India and Marrakech and raiding friend’s gardens for seed pods and beautiful or unusual flower shapes.

In recent years Fiona has exhibited regularly at ‘Made’, Brighton’s Design and Craft fair participated in The Brighton Artists’ Open studios and has also exhibited her prints at The Brighton Art Fair.