Amy Mills of PAPER MILLS

What is your idea of perfect design happiness?

COLOR BLOCK MINIMALISM & SLATE SWIMMING POOLS.

What is your greatest fear in design? 

OBJECTS / FURNITURE DEPICTING HUMAN BODY PARTS.

Which historical design figure do you most identify with?

HAVING STUDIED (AND CONTINUE TO STUDY) FINE ART, I NEED TO CHOOSE FROM THIS FIELD. JOHN COHEN IS A PHOTOGRAPHER, FILMMAKER, MUSICIAN, AND ARTIST WHO I WAS PRIVILEGED TO STUDY UNDER AT ART SCHOOL. I STILL HEAR HIS VOICE IN MY HEAD WHEN I’M ENDEAVORING TO WORK.

Which living designer do you most admire?  

MICHAEL SMITH.

What profession other than design would you like to attempt? 

RETIREMENT.

What is your greatest design extravagance? 

WE RECENTLY PURCHASED OUR DREAM HOME.

When and where were you happiest with your design? 

THE SERENBE TEXTILE LOFTS PROJECT WITH CLOTH & KIND.
THIS COLLABORATION HAD EVERYTHING AND ALLOWED ME GREAT FREEDOM TO JUST DRAW AND CARVE AND PRINT. IT WAS A TRUE SHOWCASE OF MY PERSONAL SKILL SETS AS DIRECTED BY KRISTA & TAMI.

What do you consider your greatest achievement in design? 

HAVING THE GUTS TO START THIS COMPANY AND TO STICK WITH IT
THROUGH THICK AND THIN.

If you died and came back as another designer or design object,
who or what do you think it would be? 

I’D LOVE THE ANSWER TO BE A FERRARI OR RAY BANS OR SOMETHING,
BUT HONESTLY IF I WER REINCARNATED I’D PROBABLY COME BACK AS
A METAL FOLDING CHAIR.

What specific design related talent are you lacking that you would you most like to have? 

MARKETING AND ANY KIND OF OUTREACH THAT REQUIRES
ME TO LEAVE MY STUDIO. 

What is your most treasured design related possession? 

MY HANDS THAT MAKE THINGS.

What do you regard as the lowest depths of misery in design?

STEALING FROM OTHERS.

What curse word do you most frequently use? 

WHAT THE FUCK.

What is your favorite design-related word?

BOLD GRAPHIC PATTERN.

What is your least favorite design-related word? 

‘CAN WE HAVE THIS IN TYPE II VINYL?’

What turns you on in design?

SIMPLICITY. BEAUTIFUL COLORS. THINGS THAT ARE HAND MADE.

What turns you off in design? 

BEIGE STRIPES.

What is your motto in design?

WORK HARD. BE HONEST. TRUST YOUR GUT.

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WHERE TO PURCHASE // Paper Mills is represented in CLOTH & KIND’s to-the-trade showroom. If you are an interior designer, please contact us to learn more about this extraordinary artisanal line.

ABOUT PROUST ON DESIGN //  Answered by our design icons, these must-ask questions come from a 19th century parlor game made popular by Marcel Proust, the French novelist, essayist & critic. Proust believed the direct questions and honest responses that they elicited revealed the true nature of the individual. For this column, we have put a design related spin on the traditional questions. While this method has been used by many journalists throughout the years, we were primarily inspired by The Proust Questionnaire, which appears monthly on the back page of one of our all time favorite magazines, Vanity Fair (also Krista’s alma mater). Read all of the previous Proust on Design questionnaires here.  

Palette No. 66

LEFT // Katie Leede Luxor in Red Sea
MIDDLE // Paper Mills Leopard in Seregenti
RIGHT // Carolina Irving Aegean Stripe in Tobacco/Onyx

PS  // We are thrilled to be representing each of these gorgeous textile and wallcovering lines in our Showroom and Shop. Give us a hollah if you're interested!

Paper Mills

Enjoy our latest collection of free downloadable desktop, tablet & smartphone wallpapers, courtesy of one of our favorite textile and wallpaper (the interiors kind) designers, Amy Mills of Paper Mills. Check out her entire collection and if you love 'em as much as we do, get the real deal to swath your home and make it look as good as your tech.

Truth be told, we couldn't possibly adore Amy more - both personally & professionally. We think she's one of the kindest and most talented artists alive today! Amy's wallpaper has graced the surfaces in so many of our projects - everything from the totally custom pattern that we designed in collaboration with her for last year's Serenbe showhouse to the smokin' hot custom colorway of Shanti that we used in our DXV Design Panel vignette to our Design ADAC Detroit Art Deco-inspired space in which we used Paper Mills' Tania wallpaper to client projects large and small!

So given our most obvious infatuation with Paper Mills, it should come as no surprise that it will be one of the lines represented in our boutique shop and to-the-trade showroom that's opening in Ann Arbor, MI come early next year. We can't wait to spread the Paper Mills love far and wide in the Mitten State, but in the meantime we're downloading all of her bad ass patterns to our tech to help get in our daily Paper Mills fix!

Click to download // Shanti

Click to download // Zebra Fern Hawaii

Click to download // Zebra Fern Tahiti

Click to download // Little Havana Perdido

Click to download // Sargasso Eel

Click to download // Sargasso Dry Tortuga

Click to download // Desert Rose Green Tea

Click to download // Desert Rose
Midnight

Click to download // Desert Rose
Aubergine

Click to download // Desert Rose Mojave

Click to download // Olivia

Click to download // Kyoto Saki

Click to download // Kyoto Miso

Click to download //  Kyoto Indigo

Click to download // Nani Polu

Click to download // Topo Hum Moondust

Click to download // Topo Hum Dune

Click to download // Native Parchment

Click to download // Strata Pumice

Click to download // Vales Oyster Catcher

Click to download // Sedimentary Bronze
Age

DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS // Click on the links to the patterns you love above. Once on the large image of the pattern, simply right click to download and save the image to your desktop. Here at CLOTH & KIND, we save all of our favorite Wallpaper downloads to a folder and set our Desktop & Screen Saver preferences to pull from that folder and rotate the images frequently for maximum gorgeousness while we're working. 

IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT STUFF // Y'all know this, but it's worth saying that all images in our Wallpaper column are the exclusive property of the textile and wallpaper designers that have so graciously shared their proprietary designs with us so that our tech can look all kinds of cool. Under no circumstances may any part of their work be copied, duplicated, manipulated or used in anyway without their express written permission. 

DXV Design Panel

Earlier this year, we received the tremendous honor of being one of seven design firms invited by DXV, the luxury division of American Standard, to create a space inspired by a classic work of literature.

Water for Elephants by novelist Sara Gruen was the novel we chose. It spoke to us on many levels, but primarily because of the beautifully tragic nature of the love story that unfolded in a third rate traveling circus, at the start of the Great Depression, between Marlena, the heroine and an orphan with no where else to turn, and her lover Jacob, the circus vet. The pages are filled with freaks and clowns, wonder and pain, anger and passion, which created a unique design opportunity for us to imagine what Marlena's only real retreat and refuge - her personal dressing room in a train car - may have looked like.

Marlena's signature color, pink, was a starting point for the creative design that guided the mood for this space. We kicked the design off with a custom wallpaper, the lush and robust leaf and lotus pattern of Shanti by PaperMills in a sultry and shocking hot pink, which we showcased within ebonized wood paneled walls of a traditional train car.

These elements guided many of the design details in both vignettes, with nods seen in the vintage brutalist lotus chandelier, the murano glass leaf sconces and floral pendants, and the custom scroll metal work that we designed on the water closet doors.

As is always the case with us, fabrics tell our story, and thus we incorporated the exotic textiles Lazlo and Idadora, both patterns from Tulu Textiles, and custom tassels and bouillon trim, created for us by our partners at Fringe Market. We envisioned Marlena primping at a vanity with a Hollywood style mirror, our custom designed brass luggage rack above her piled high with all of the necessities of the star of the show, nestled under the arc of the train car ceiling with a dressing screen and steamer trunk at her side.

And then as kismet would have it, we landed on the new DXV Oak Hill Suite including the soaking tub, freestanding sink and toilet paired with the Traditional tub filler and Rain Can shower head for their nod to the Depression Era. We also incorporated several accessories from the Randall collection, including the towel ring, toilet paper holder and robe hook. All of the DXV suites work so well and seamlessly together that it was a cinch to pull from the various collections that we felt best fit our overall aesthetic. And their gorgeous new Satin Brass finish is divine! Everything came together so beautifully, and paired elegantly with the Tempest Tileworks Dublin tile from Filmore Clark that we used for the dramatic backdrop within the shower. This all coalesced into a swanky getaway, a personal oasis for Marlena.

One of our favorite parts of this project, aside from having the total creative freedom provided by DXV to create this space exactly as we dreamed of it, was styling our set with the help of Jim Goulet. Fanciful vintage costumes, precious perfume bottles, beat up old luggage sets, and even a stuffed peacock all became a reality as Jim and his talented team found a way to bring our every whim to life.

Our set design became reality in a way that is so stunningly authentic through the creative vision and talent of photographer Earl Kendall and his team at Quincy Street Studios. Not to mention, Earl's light-filled studio was just about the perfect place to spend three days styling and shooting our set while noshing on scrumptious food, delicious coffee and sweets. We were totally spoiled! We owe a debt of gratitude to every single person involved in building our set. 

We couldn't resist this beautiful finishing touch, a nod to the novel's title, a pair of Brass Elephant Handles from our friend Carla Stolper at CF Michaels.

Serious fun! We got all glammed up for a photoshoot that took place on set. Much appreciation and bravado for the talented and lovely Selena Salfen for capturing these swanky images of us, and to the very cool and equally skilled video team that shot the clip you saw at the beginning of this post, Run With Scissors, Inc.

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Want to see more behind the scenes from this project? Check out our Pinterest board (which has been our private design & collaboration space for this project, until today when we made the board public!) as well as our Instagram account (use #dxvtopsecret and #clothandkindcircus) to see all of the pics we snapped throughout the course of this project.

Please also be sure to check out the rest of the DXV Design Panel and the incredible work of the other designers, who all nailed it! 

Lisa Mende, Breakfast at Tiffany's
Regina Sturrock, Anna Karenina
Justin Shaulis, A Room With A View
Lori Gilder & Rebecca Reynolds, Like Water For Chocolate

We also want to give a huge shout out to our killer intern, Elizabeth Dooley, who contributed so greatly to this project before she graduated from The University of Georgia. This girl is a creative force to be reckoned with, as is evident in her renderings of our space below, and we have no doubt that someday you'll be reading about her in the pages of Elle Decor and House Beautiful.

There are not really words to truly express our thanks to the tremendous team at DXV and American Standard for including us in this visionary project of yours, and for taking our initial design concept (above) to beautiful and perfect completion.

Jeannette Long, Debbie Drury, Margaret Monteleone, Jean-Jacques L'henaff, we've immensely enjoyed this entire process from the very get-go and happily count you amongst our friends. Your product line is exceptional, your design work - visionary, and your team is simply the best. Sincere thanks.

Lastly, Miss V - Veronika Miller of Modenus, whose brainchild this project is, there are no words but you know how we feel about you. #soulsisters

No. 46

TOP LEFT //  Zanzibar in Green from Peter Dunham Textiles (#111ZAN03)
RIGHT // Marco Jute Soumak Woven Rug in Juniper by Bunny Williams for Dash & Albert
BOTTOM LEFT // Bukhara in Blue/Green from Peter Dunham Textiles (#111BKH05)
MIDDLE LEFT // Shanti Wallpaper in India from Paper Mills (#P2006)

No. 40

TOP RIGHT // Nani in Polu from Paper Mills (#P2401)
BOTTOM RIGHT // Bellagio in Sapphire from Fabricut (#0253952)
LEFT // Tibet in Navy from Clarence House (#34706)

Fab Five: Animalistic

1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5 

Not all animal prints are created equal. Our design philosophy is to use them oh-so-sparingly and with great tact. The chair above is an example of how we recently used a ZAK+FOX print with stunning and sophisticated results. But just as the quote above (which we adore) indicates, you need not lose sleep over the opinion of others. If you love it, it works. Period. So tell us... what's your take on animalistic interiors?