Celebrated designer Ken Fulk debuts a whimsical collab, plus two sisters bring Chilean design to the Bay Area.
The new collab features textiles and wallpaper
Looking toward a new age of whimsical decoration, design icon Ken Fulk and French luxury home textile and furniture brand Pierre Frey recently debuted the dual collection The Surreal World and The Cult of Beauty.
Fulk says the wallpaper collection was meant to be whimsical and optimistic.
The collection’s rugs, fabrics and wallpapers act as the canvas for Fulk’s usual parade of extraordinary ideas. “Fabrics and wallpapers are the most inspiring of all the decorative arts, because they create the backdrop,” Fulk says. “For years, we’ve designed bespoke patterns for upholstery and wallcoverings in our projects and developed custom finishes and murals. In fact, we used some of our favorites and beloved outtakes in the development of this collection.”
Fulk’s affection for canines (he owns three golden retrievers) is reflected in the collection.
The collections consist of canine portraits, gardens, landscapes and architecture, all in eccentric fashion. There are 11 designs, and a majority have their own color options. Both The Surreal World and The Cult of Beauty feature a subsection titled BRUTALIST. In celebration of brutalist architecture, this design plays with light and shapes creating a 3D illusion.
A wallpaper print is Fulk’s kaleidoscope, an abstract floral arrangement embroidered with multicolored pinks, greens and blues. The HEDGEROW carpet, also available as a fabric and wallpaper, offers an aerial view of hedges in the design of a labyrinth in golden or green tones, with line designs creating a 3D effect. “This collection is very optimistic and comes at a time when I think we all need an injection of that,” says Fulk. “Looking at the weirdness of our world, the highs and the lows, who doesn’t want a monkey swinging from a chandelier right now?”
The Huanco stool is part of Prima de Sur’s latest collection from Chile.
San Francisco-based Prima de Sur is a Chilean-inspired digital shop founded by two sisters, Christina Nicole and Lauren Michelle. Nicole settled and currently resides with her fiance in Patagonia, Chile, where the handmade and traditional clothing, accessories and home decor are produced. The store’s name was specifically chosen to display the sisters’ main mission.
“For us, this represents where we source our items from in southern Chile and the importance of working with artists and makers who are predominantly female,” says Michelle, who lives in San Francisco and New York City. “We believe that the love that goes into making each item remains alive each time you use it in your own daily life.” This online-based boutique offers a variety of signature items like sheepskin rugs and baskets—all handwoven by either Indigenous women in Araucania, Chile, or by locals on Patagonia Island—made with sturdy plants like manila and greigia sphacelata. Another favorite: the Huanco stool, ingeniously crafted as one continuous piece of wood with no separate parts.
Photography by: FULK PRODUCT PHOTOS COURTESY OF PIERRE FREY; PRIMA DE SUR PRODUCT PHOTO COURTESY OF PRIMA DE SUR
