Christopher Farr Cloth now in SA

WORDS: Danielle Weakley

The bright-eyed creative director of Christopher Farr Cloth, Michal Silver, came to London via Tel Aviv by way of New York and is currently in South Africa as a guest of St Leger & Viney to launch the new Cloth collection.

Meet Michal Silver and you can immediately see what British rug designer Christopher Farr must have seen all those years ago. With her poker-straight dark hair and chutzpah, she shared nothing more with Farr than a history of art school and a home base in London.

Yet Michal, who had been working at Brit fashion stalwart Mulberry for a couple of years had a burning desire to try her hand at something different and move into textiles, which is about the time when she and Christopher Farr decided, after just a single meeting, to join forces on a textile collection and become business partners.

As Michal, explains it, “Chris Farr was well-known for contemporary rugs. He had traditional weavers, but fantastic designers and architects who collaborated with him on the collections. There was a real synergy to expand what he was doing, so we thought: ‘why not?’”

The pair’s first collection, 10 years ago, referenced abstract expressionist American artists from the 1950s and 60s and they’ve never looked back – constantly tweaking and refining what is widely regarded as their signature look – one that pairs bold colours with oversized patterns.

“Using textile designers to contribute designs means the collections are eclectic. The challenge is to make them coherent, so the selection of designers we collaborate with will have a certain affinity to the same design ethos. We use patterns and our scale is big. We use colours and they are bold and bright, and we print on white so that it’s clean and fresh. We’re not afraid to push the boundaries and experiment.”

Punchy range of fabrics

Michal is currently in South Africa as a guest of St Leger & Viney to launch the new Cloth collection. For the collection, Michal has collaborated with designer  – and long-time Chris Farr favourite – Kate Blee to create a punchy range of fabrics.

The original pattern, simply entitled Untitled, is described by Michal as a big, overlapping square print. “Kate had worked with Chris for many years,” she explains, “and we had spoken about working together. She is really interested in working with scale and colour, so we worked on a big print. The repeat on Untitled is two metres, which is unheard of in hand-printing and needed two sets of screens to create.”

To offset the bold larger-than-life character of Untitled, Kate went on to create Pollen. This is a first for Christopher Farr Cloth in terms of its small scale. As Michal asserts: “We don’t do small designs. But they merge and connect and are very bright and fresh, so now we have big scale and small scale.

“I am really excited by the South African reaction to the collection. I found South Africans very embracing of modern design and comfortable using it. The light here is so wonderful and people are happy to experiment with less traditional design.”

Thanks Michal. We like to think so too.

More on Christopher Farr Cloth:

The textile collection is made up of more than 40 designs of prints and weaves, using materials like combed Egyptian cottons, Belgian linens and acrylic dyed solution fabrics. The hand-printed collection is produced in the suburbs of London by a small family-owned company, which Michal says she uses as a laboratory for colour, scale and design. Christopher Farr’s current stable of designers and artists includes Kate Blee, Ilse Crawford and Ptolemy Mann. www.christopherfarrcloth.com