Deus ex Gardenia features in House & Garden

We were thrilled to be included in a lovely piece exploring how designers are finding inspiration from our amazing museums. Here's a snippet from the piece featuring our Kanopea and Mayura Valley mural along with their original artworks. 

"Designers draw inspiration from all manner of places, from the natural world to fashion and literature. But one of the most failsafe sources of designers' inspiration can be found in the artefacts, paintings and textiles buried within our museums, and the result is often a collaboration that we non-decorators can enjoy. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement. Museums get to shake their image as imposing, buttoned-up institutions where beautiful objects become stuck in a display or lost in cavernous archives and brings them into the fold of contemporary design. Meanwhile, designers get to mine ancient collections for inspiration...

However, these historic motifs do not always immediately translate to 21st-century design. Adapting them to suit modern day interiors is a common challenge that the brands have to address. ‘It’s a fine balance between honouring the original and making it relevant and appealing for a contemporary setting,’ says Katya Nappolini, founder of Deus ex Gardenia, which has just launched its second wallpaper collection with the British Museum. Katya was struck by how saturated the historical pigments were and decided that they needed tempering slightly for contemporary interiors without losing the richness of the original objects being referenced. 'I've always designed from historic references and so it felt like a very natural extension of how I work and what we're drawn to as a brand.’ The collection celebrates history and nature by reinterpreting rare artworks from the museum’s collections, including 17th and 18th century-Indian miniatures, textiles and metalwork.

‘Being able to have access and get close to the works felt like a privilege – to see an artwork up close, with only a few other people around you, an object that has survived centuries,' says Katya. These collaborations are, of course, commercial endeavours, but they create a tangible connection to thousands of years of art, history and human culture."

Full article here.