MAKING AMERICAN PERSIMMON

Available as wallpaper and fabric, American Persimmon is offered in colors Sunrise and Midnight. Detail of photo taken by Alexandra Rowley

American Persimmon is the signature pattern of Food Forest, our new collection of wallpapers and textiles. Available in colors Sunrise and Midnight, American Persimmon is the most creatively ambitious design I’ve undertaken yet. Here’s how it came together:

Sketches and prints of the American Persimmon tree. Detail of photo taken by Alexandra Rowley.

First, I read about the American Persimmon tree, a popular option for anchoring food forests, groupings of native, perennial plants that center around fruit trees to replicate sustainable ecosystems found in nature. I learned that American Persimmons are native trees that grow well in the presence of companion plants, such as bee balm, coneflowers and yarrow, and are magnets for birds like the yellow-rumped warbler, who are drawn to their sweet, orange fruit.

L: An early sketch of the American Persimmon pattern.
R: Color chips representing the twenty-two colors in the two American Persimmon color ways, Midnight and Sunrise. Photo by Alexandra Rowley.

Next, I created sketches to form a repeating pattern which integrated the various plants and animals that comprised the design. I also mixed twenty-two ink colors for the design’s many motifs. American Persimmon's palette reflects actual colors found in nature. The Midnight and Sunrise color ways vary only in their ground colors which are meant to suggest different times of day.

The yellow-rumped warbler print required four colors.

With inks in hand, I made a print of each motif using a reduction method, a technique in which the printmaker uses the same block and removes surface area in between each printing pass. Colors layer on top of each other and proper registration ensures image integrity. The example above shows each stage of developing the yellow-rumped warbler print.

The fifteen linocut prints that comprise American Persimmon.

The design required fifteen individual linocut prints. Once I finished making the prints, I scanned them at high resolution and then placed them together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle using my original repeating pattern sketch as a guide. Whereas my process starts out entirely by hand, digital tools play a key role in transforming my artwork into a final design.

American Persimmon fabric, in colors Midnight and Sunrise.

Next I sent the digital files, the linocut prints, and the ink color chips to the wallpaper and fabric manufacturers who print my designs. After several rounds of trials, the prints were ready for production. The wallpaper was printed on a clay-coated paper ground in Connecticut, and the fabric was printed on Belgian linen in Pennsylvania. American Persimmon, and its companion patterns, Buffalo Poppy and Leaflet, launched in September.

Here I am keeping company with American Persimmon, Midnight fabric, and Possumwood, a linocut print also inspired by the American Persimmon tree. Photo by Sabrina Hounshell.

Order your American Persimmon samples today from our showroom partners or directly from us.