Tented Bedroom 

This tented bedroom was inspired by Renzo Mongiardano’s tented room that he designed for Lee Randziwil in the 1960s. The design of this room did not stop at visual replication of Mongiardano’s aesthetic. We used the same method of creation and installation by designing our own fabric block patterns and printing them on Indian cotton. We combined both flowered and paisleyed patterns in blue, green, brown, and ivory colorways. These fabric blocks were designed by Tichenor & Thorp. Once the patterns were approved by the client they were sent to India to be printed by hand, one block at a time. The process was grueling and painstaking to say the least. Dyes could only be mixed once, so any error in the interpretation of our design required the process to begin again, due to the slight differences in dye lots. While the process was not seamless, it was extremely gratifying to see Brian Tichenor’s hand drawn sketch interpreted into wooden wooden blocks and stamped one by one onto the fabric. The difficulties caused by language barriers coupled with the need for precise execution made the job far more detail oriented than we would have expected. My role in this project involved drafting and blocking out various colorways and fabric block designs based on Brian Tichenor and Rain Thorp’s feedback. I was then tasked with turning these seemingly simple designs into orders that could be explained step by step, down to which dye needed to be applied first and how many wooden blocks would be needed to make up the entire pattern. I worked hand in hand with our fabric manufacturer, Lisa Bittan and her team in India. Samples were sent back and forth, colors were approved, or tweaked. After 5 months we received the final product. The room was completed in August 2018.