February 24, 2022 By Pili Swanson SanFrancisco Magazine
Looking toward a new age of whimsical decoration, design icon Ken Fulk and French luxury home textile and furniture brand Pierre Frey recently debuted the dual collection The Surreal World and The Cult of Beauty.
The collection’s rugs, fabrics and wallpapers act as the canvas for Fulk’s usual parade of extraordinary ideas. “Fabrics and wallpapers are the most inspiring of all the decorative arts, because they create the backdrop,” Fulk says. “For years, we’ve designed bespoke patterns for upholstery and wallcoverings in our projects and developed custom finishes and murals. In fact, we used some of our favorites and beloved outtakes in the development of this collection.”
The collections consist of canine portraits, gardens, landscapes and architecture, all in eccentric fashion. There are 11 designs, and a majority have their own color options. Both The Surreal World and The Cult of Beauty feature a subsection titled BRUTALIST. In celebration of brutalist architecture, this design plays with light and shapes creating a 3D illusion.
A wallpaper print is Fulk’s kaleidoscope, an abstract floral arrangement embroidered with multicolored pinks, greens and blues. The HEDGEROW carpet, also available as a fabric and wallpaper, offers an aerial view of hedges in the design of a labyrinth in golden or green tones, with line designs creating a 3D effect. “This collection is very optimistic and comes at a time when I think we all need an injection of that,” says Fulk. “Looking at the weirdness of our world, the highs and the lows, who doesn’t want a monkey swinging from a chandelier right now?”