Los Angelinos, take note. Peter Dunham’s Hollywood at Home, his one stop shop for some of the hottest hand-printed textile lines around (Carolina Irving, Lisa Fine, John Robshaw, Martyn Lawrence-Bullard and his own), custom furniture and vintage finds has opened a second branch, also on La Cienega Boulevard.

Of even bigger news in my book, Hollywood at Home will be carrying Rodman Primack’s new line of Japanese inspired fabrics, hand-printed on Belgian linen, simply called R.P. Miller. Since childhood, Primack has been influenced by his grandparents extensive collection of Japanese art and antiques gathered on their travels. Based on 18th and 19th century ukiyo-e (woodblock prints), his new textiles are modern interpretations of traditional patterns.  “In the fabrics various themes and details have been abstracted to create something new that is meant to evoke, not literally replicate.” I am still waiting on some live samples, but the showroom did send me some close-up photos.

You can see the four main patterns in the indigo blue colorway stacked up here. The one I find particularly interesting is the second one down, hard to see in just this small bit. It is an expanded and simplified rendering of the angled and foreshortened perspective seen in the depiction of wooden fences, bridges and walkways in woodblock prints and folding screens (byobu).

Here you can see it much better on the sofa in this photo from the showroom via Stylebeat. A pattern like this works best for a large-scale project with a horizontal view like this.

Here ia a 17th century masterpiece by Ogata Korin in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum that has just the kind of bridge and perspective I was referring to.

And again, in a woodblock print by Kitao Shigemasa, you can even see the grain of the wood on the floorboards. For more on Japanese perspective and its influence on Western art, see here and here (and make sure to compare this print to Whistler’s Caprice in Purple and Gold shown there).

It would have been a perfect lead-in for the next fabric if the motif on the doorway in the print above had been asanoha (hemp) instead of sayagata (key fret), as the classic hemp pattern is the boldest of the graphic prints in the line. It comes in numerous colors including the red, grey, green and indigo shown here. The truth is, the hemp motif needs its own post one of these days!

The sweetest pattern is this petals in the river motif, shown in red below and blue up at the top.

I was trying to find a yukata (cotton kimono) photo in my files with a similar pattern, as I know I have seen them, but the best I could come up with was this grass pattern.  But it could easily be part of his collection, don’t you think?  You can see why I am always wishing the fabrics of traditional Japanese dress were upholstery weight!

 

There is also a cute pattern of tiny stars and perhaps some others, I am not sure. More when I get my samples!

Image Credits: 1, 5-6. courtesy of Hollywood at Home, 2. via Stylebeat, 3. via The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 4. via The Library of Congress, 7. me.