Eloise Renouf
21 // Eloise Renouf grew up in Hampshire, UK, and now lives in Nottingham. She studied Printed Textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University. She went on to run a stationery company, Eloise R Designs, where her customers included Liberty, Heal’s, John Lewis Partnership and the Design Museum, London. Eloise’s style and work is influenced by her childhood home, the environment of which, in the aesthetic sense, has really stuck with her. She loves clean lines, brightly coloured plastic, textural ceramics and bold prints. Eloise also likes to visit old bookshops and is always keeping an eye out for books on home crafts and textiles from the 1950s and 60s. Clients have included Target, Cloud9 Fabrics, Land of Nod, Uppercase magazine and Penny Kennedy, and she recently illustrated a book entitled Twenty Ways to Draw a Tree. In the future, Eloise hopes to expand her own range of prints and fabric accessories, whilst also working collaboratively with others. Her dream commission would be to design a range for Marimekko.
Design Heroes: Lucienne Day, Barbara Hepworth, Sir Terence Conran
Colour Block No.1
All Eloise’s designs start life as hand-painted or printed elements that are then scanned, manipulated and coloured using Adobe llustrator. Here, solid squares in muted mid-century hues are the backdrop for black multidirectional lines.
Geometry No.7
One of Eloise’s abstract explorations, drawing on mid-century textile art for inspiration. She wished to ‘keep things lively’ with candy pink and tan brown colours.
Flock Red
All featured designs were self-initiated pieces for Eloise’s Etsy shop. This design captures the dynamism of a flock of flying birds; the use of two contrasting colours makes the abstract birds appear to fold out towards us. The black texture has the look of pastels lightly rubbed over paper.
Line Print No. 1
This design began life as printed paint marks, which Eloise then grouped together, colouring them earthy grey and warm brown, brightened up with flamingo pink. Although Eloise enjoys the freedom to experiment that the digital process allows, the hand-created approach is very important to her. Her work is therefore a happy balance of the two.
Spring Sampler No. 1
Little leaf-shaped motifs are filled with a mixture of cross-hatching, stripes and dashes. Rather than being scattered, they are arranged formally in rows.