The Yorkshire-born designers fulfilling a teenage dream thanks to the family of Lucienne Day

“We never met as teenagers but we did all the same things. We watched 1960s films and went to junk shops,” says Keith.

They even both went to college in Newcastle – one to the university and one to the then polytechnic and even drank in the same pubs and had the same friends, but their paths never crossed.

The is until 1997 when they were both living in London and landed jobs in the same design agency where they bonded over mid-20th Century design.

They have been together ever since, in life and business, as co-founders of the homewares brand Mini Moderns.

"We discovered we had this ridiculously similar past,” says Mark who grew up in Pudsey before moving to London where he had ambitions to work in television.

After a short career in TV he became a designer maker while Keith was working for fashion brand Red or Dead before they both ending up with for the same agency in packaging and branding. But they both missed making something tangible and being masters of their own destiny.

They ended up writing books on pattern, and both realised that they could do better design themselves and so in 2006 Mini Modern was born.

Mini Moderns is an interiors brand specialising in applied pattern across a range of products including wallpapers, fabrics, cushions, rugs and ceramics.

Their initial collection was snapped up by Heal's and the brand continues to go from strength to strength, selling online and via selected stockists around the world and they now make a range of bedding for John Lewis.

But their latest collaboration has clearly been a labour of love for this chatty pair – recreating two of Lucienne Day’s iconic wallpaper for the first time in 70 years.

One of the 20th century’s most influential British textile designers, Lucienne Day created visionary designs for textiles, wallpapers, carpets and ceramics, pioneering the post-war ‘Contemporary’ style.

Graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1940, Lucienne’s breakthrough came with Calyx – the standout textile at the 1951 Festival of Britain, for which she also designed three wallpapers.

Keith and Mark have long admired her work, having first come across her designs as teenagers.

“We can only imagine what impact her exciting, optimistic designs must have had on post-war Britain. We admire her principled stance of harnessing the marriage of fine art and mass production, creating purposely affordable designs,” says Keith.

The pair worked closely with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation, in what became a labour of love extended due to the Covid pandemic.

“For us, the opportunity to collaborate with the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation to create faithful reissues of Lucienne Day’s original wallpaper designs has been a dream project – and with invaluable support from the archivists at the Whitworth, the process has been a highly collaborative and rewarding experience,” says Keith who grew up in Guisborough.

The Whitworth in Manchester holds Lucienne Day’s personal collection of textiles and wallpapers, and it is here that they began the painstaking process of reproducing two of her original wallpaper designs.

Mark and Keith identified two patterns from the 1950s that they felt epitomised Lucienne Day’s approach to wallpaper design: Provence (1951) and Syncopation (1958).

Featuring a mix of abstract and botanical icons within elliptical shapes, Provence was one of the three wallpapers that Lucienne Day designed for the 1951 Festival of Britain – the landmark exhibition that has long been a source of inspiration for Mini Moderns.

The original wallpaper was hand block printed by John Line and Sons for their Limited Editions 1951 collection.

To emulate this technique would be difficult with any machine printing methods, so Mini Moderns collaborated with the Foundation to produce the design digitally, ensuring that Lucienne Day’s unique mark-making was reproduced as faithfully as possible, whilst losing none of the original’s quirks that resulted from block printing.

Syncopation (catalogued simply as C868 & C869) was the next design to inspire Mark and Keith.

They were immediately drawn to its characterful mark-making – the abstract pattern of skilfully executed lines, dashes and dots forming a softly sophisticated vertical stripe, with a expressive visual rhythm that is quintessentially Lucienne Day.

Originally printed by WPM and marketed by Crown via The Architects’ Book of One Hundred Wallpapers, the design duo immediately recognised the method of production as ‘surface print’ – a traditional technique that was developed to replicate the rich textured effect of hand block printing.

Since their Accrington-based wallpaper manufacturer specialises in this technique, they were confident of being able to achieve a very faithful reproduction of the original.

The wallpapers will be officially launched at a special event at the Whitworth on March 27 in conjunction with Paula Day, Founder, Trustee & Chair of the Robin and Lucienne Day Foundation and their daughter although samples are available on their website (www.minimoderns.com).

“We are thrilled that my mother’s exquisite designs for wallpapers are being highlighted through this collaboration with Mini Moderns,” says Paula Day.

"Less well-known than her textiles, her wallpapers are equally brilliant mid-century designs which look perfectly at home in today’s interiors. Mini Moderns’ meticulous and patient attention to every tiny detail has resulted in beautifully authentic new productions which bring these historic designs back to vibrant life.”

Provence is available in two colourways: Light Ochre and Chestnut. £160 per roll. Roll size: 52cm x 10m Syncopation is available in two colourways: Yellow and Grey. £110 per roll. Roll size: 52cm x 10m