editor's obsession: buttoned up.
October 03, 2011
If you knew me as a child, you would have observed a few things about me: I often adorned myself with a ring on each finger (sometimes two), I liked to take my mother’s cosmetics to school in order to give schoolmates makeovers on the playground, and I collected not-normal-for-a-six-year-old things, such as buttons. Well, at least I thought it wasn’t normal. From the looks of Tracy Kendall’s bespoke button wallpaper, she clearly shared my same childhood affinity for the random, round appliques. “I had a button jar and also bought buttons that I liked at flea markets, and I wanted to so something with them,” she says. “I had already designed the sequined wallpaper, and I worked out that I could apply the buttons in a similar fashion, so I did!” Each button—and there are 2,000 of them per square yard—is hand-applied in a sharp grid onto hand-printed paper. At first glance, it’s tricky to distinguish what the wall treatment is (Sequins? Tiny tiles?), but the end result of the shimmering mother-of-pearl-like adornments satisfy both the button-collecting schoolgirl I once was and the glitz-craving adult I am today.
xo,
Arlyn
