Botanical prints and embroideries have captivated interior designer Schuyler Samperton’s imagination since she was a child, but saccharine florals never appealed to her. Early on she saw her mother, no shrinking violet, decorate with vibrantly colored vintage susanis and fearlessly don jewel-toned Indian-print head scarves with designer dresses. When she was barely into her teens, Schuyler enjoyed poking around rambling old houses and became enamored with time-worn English chintz; Soon she started collecting remnants of the patterned fabric along with Moroccan tent borders, Japanese silks, and her own tendril-covered susanis. All of these influences inform her debut textile collection which is anchored by exuberant floral prints that are unabashedly feminine without being twee.
Chair covered in Cordoba, wall in Nellcote.
Case in point: Caledonia, a printed linen with lush rose-laden branches, birds, and butterflies. (Schuyler chose the name Caledonia, a Latin term for Scotland, because the fabric looks like something one might find in a crumbling British country manor house.) The motifs and composition are rather classic—in fact, the design was adapted from a centuries-old Indian document—but the colorways are unconventional. In one option, Schuyler juxtaposes an intense imperial blue with rich plum and coral-pink, and in another, she combines a nuanced teal with deep-peony-pink and brown on cream.
Caledonia print in Schuyler Samperton’s new textile line
“The antique design that inspired Caledonia was funkier and less stuffy than other old-school patterns with a certain naïveté that I liked,” says Schuyler, explaining that she wanted this unceremonious quality to pervade her entire line. Additional prints in the collection include, Overlea, a leafy pattern taken from one of her Mom’s scarves; Celandine, with a large, lively poppy motif; and Cordoba, a paisley with undulating vines that reminds Schuyler of a garden.
“A lot of men are liking the line, which is interesting to me,” she says, “The way these florals are drawn, their scale and their saturated coloration, I hope eliminates any kind of treacly factor.”
