TEXTILES THAT TALK

Hera Ford PHOTO COURTESY OF SCHUMACHER

Schumacher’s collaboration with Hera Ford makes textile dreams a reality with romantic designs that tell a story and take you back in time.

Schumacher Come Back as a Flower fabric made into curtains and used on upholstered chair PHOTO COURTESY OF SCHUMACHER

With monikers such as “Come Back as a Flower” and “Close Your Eyes and Remember,” Mississippi-born Hera Ford is instilling the Southern art of storytelling into Schumacher’s (fschumacher.com) latest collaboration. The recent textile graduate was quickly discovered for her beautiful hand, and when combined with a poetic ancestral background, the result reaped an embodiment of passions stemming from her deep Southern heritage and curious spirit. Also written in the fabric is the inspiration of a botanical focus and remembering her grandmother’s birth on a plantation. Ubiquitous flowers drawn during art school developed into a study of lines and how they move, and what you see in this collection is an exploration of that practice transformed into a botanical trance and an awareness of connection to the earth. Portraiture takes the form of romantic and contemporary florals, allowing you to bring a garden into your home. Inspiration became tangible when studying drawings dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, which Ford memorializes in each textile. Close Your Eyes and Remember, in wallpaper and fabric form, plays with an ethereal romanticism that scales ceilings and walls and furniture. To emphasize the artistry, Schumacher kept charcoal gestures that might not have been perfect, illuminating the message Ford wants told through her designs. In another fabric, Come Back as a Flower, a name drawn from Stevie Wonder’s celebratory album about nature, she infuses the connection between humans and nature. Fabric textures complement the texture of the story told through the soft forms, making the collection a dreamscape of a forgotten past and the beauty of nature.

Come Back as a Flower wallcovering. PHOTO COURTESY OF SCHUMACHER