The Arden Collection: Melissa White for Zoffany

The Arden Collection was the beginning of everything that came after. It was my first internationally available collection, and Zoffany's decision to call it "Melissa White for Zoffany" was, at the time, a statement of confidence I had not quite expected. I was barely known outside the Elizabethan sphere; the collection changed that.

I developed it with my studio partner the late David Cutmore, whose guidance and brushwork runs through many of the designs. We drew on more than fifteen years of shared research into Elizabethan wall painting, selecting a range of designs that spanned roughly a century of decorative fashion: from the mid-sixteenth century Arden pattern, which looks back towards medieval tapestries and bestiaries, to the startlingly modern-feeling Merchants Stripe, taken from a mid-seventeenth century wall painting. Every design name traces back to the house or place where its original source was discovered.

The artwork was created on large plastered canvases in my Hastings studio, hand-painted and then engraved to preserve the hand-crafted quality of the originals. The techniques were the same we used for private commissions: ageing, distressing, cracking, rubbing out, and washing back. Zoffany's digital printing then carried that surface quality into the finished wallpaper and fabric without losing it.

Verdure, the signature design of the collection, is a lush pastoral landscape based on a late seventeenth century painted cloth found at Owlpen Manor in the Cotswolds. It depicts rolling fields, a church, waterfalls, and the hunting and religious references that characterise the period. It won the Homes & Gardens Best Printed Fabric Award in 2012. 

View the Arden Collection and the award-winning Verdure design at Zoffany.