Emma J Shipley's designs are the kind you keep noticing new details in long after they are on the wall. Here we look at what makes her work for Clarke & Clarke so distinctive, the designs we love most, and practical ways to use her wallpapers and fabrics at home.
What makes an Emma J Shipley design
Every design starts as an intricate, hand-drawn illustration, and most of them are full of animals, both real and imagined. Her creatures often come with a signature twist: tigers with peacock tails and clockwork details, winged lynx, leopard-spotted elephants and mythical horned zebras.
The inspiration is wide-ranging. Some designs come from her own travels, others from myths, legends, adventure stories and the work of earlier naturalists. Zambezi wallpaper was inspired by Jules Verne's adventure stories and her travels to Botswana and Victoria Falls. Bosque wallpaper comes from her time on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica, with a puma surrounded by macaws, monkeys, sloths and ocelots. Audubon wallpaper nods to the 19th-century naturalist John James Audubon, with mechanical bees and birds carrying metallic tags inscribed with the names of scientists and naturalists.
Using her wallpapers
These are busy, detailed patterns, so give them room to be seen. A few approaches that work well:
- Go all in on a small room. A cloakroom, study or dining room papered on all four walls feels immersive and magical, and the detail rewards anyone who stops to look.
- Pick one feature wall. Behind a bed or a sofa, a single papered wall gives you the impact without overwhelming the space.
- Choose a mural for a big statement. The Highland Wonder wallpaper mural takes you to the Scottish Highlands, inspired by tales of the Loch Ness monster, prehistoric creatures and fantastical stories.
- Look for quieter scenes. Wonder World wallpaper reveals more the longer you look: two curious cats, a puffin and a leopard-spotted hare resting on an endlessly winding tree.
Metallic details appear on some designs, such as the shimmering highlights on Extinct, and they catch the light differently through the day, so look at them in the room before deciding where they go.
Using her fabrics
Her fabrics bring the same drawings to curtains, cushions and upholstery. Several come from her Animalia collection for Clarke & Clarke and are printed on 100% cotton.
- Amazon fabric brings hand-drawn jungle scenes to life in bold fashion colours, in Blue, Jungle, Navy, Pink and Red. It makes a vibrant statement on curtains, cushions and upholstery.
- Tigris fabric shows prowling tigers on a sketched leopard-print ground, inspired by classical Greek and Roman mythology. It also comes as a wallpaper.
- Kruger is an explosion of jungle life with giraffes, horned zebras, birds and insects, in colours from subtle Eggshell to bright Magenta, Lime and Teal.
- Wildstripe fabric abstracts her zebra illustrations into a stripe with breaks of line, asymmetry and movement, which makes it a clever partner for her busier prints.
For outside, Paradise Lost, a menagerie of her best-loved illustrations with a touch of Toile de Jouy influence, is also available as Paradise Lost Indoor Outdoor fabric. It comes as a velvet and a wallpaper too, so one design can run through a whole scheme.
Mixing and matching
The simplest way to combine her designs is to keep to one hero pattern per room and let everything else support it. If the walls are Zambezi or Bosque, choose Wildstripe or a plain velvet for the sofa and pull a single colour from the paper for cushions and lampshades.
Going the other way works too: a calm, plain room with one Amazon or Tigris armchair gives you a dose of her wild world without committing a whole wall. Matching a curtain fabric to a wallpaper in the same design, such as Tigris or Paradise Lost, creates a rich, enveloping room.
Explore the collection
See every design in our Clarke & Clarke x Emma Shipley collection. If you would like help choosing a colourway or working out how much pattern a room can take, visit the shop in Somerset or contact the team for advice.
