One of Teja Jamilla Williams’ first memories is of drawing peacocks with teeth. “I remember my parents laughing at me when I’d drawn them (as I just assumed they had teeth in their beaks). More often though, I spent my time as a child drawing cats and dinosaurs and making sequin dresses for troll dolls.”
Cats, dinosaurs and troll dolls have developed into pirates, butterflies, and steampunk, influenced heavily through Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Japonism. And it comes as no surprise that among her favourite illustrators are Aubrey Beardsley and Takato Yamamoto. This makes for a vibrantly broad range of interests, but somehow they get skilfully woven together into fabulous surface designs and prints.
She has great drawing skills, as many of her designs demonstrate – everything from flowers, to cities, to narwhals and galleons. “I love going to museums like the V & A and looking at old textiles and wallpapers but I usually get design ideas when I’m doing something like watching a film or listening to music. Once I’m set on an idea I sketch out the layout so I can get the scale right then I’ll usually draw it using a dip pen and ink. I always start off working in black and white and then digitally colour my artwork.” Her designs feature a particularly cool and smoky palette. The colours are muted and often dark, with a bent towards greens and blues, with plummy purples and browns.
Teja first started selling handprinted socks featuring her designs at a fund-raising fair for her BA Surface Design degree show, but it wasn’t until a few years later in October 2010 that she decided to develop this idea into her own business.
She has had her share of technical difficulties; having no funds for proper equipment, she has had to rely on her ingenuity to get a result. She told me about one time when she needed to expose screens big enough to print her tights. After many failed attempts, she eventually found a halogen porch alarm light that was strong enough, and got it to work by tying it to a clothes drying rack and balancing it between two chairs either side of the screen. Oh, such is the life! I will bet there is more than one maker out there who has had to summon all their crazy ideas together in order to get something to work.
But technical challenges are not the only difficulties. She remembers, “for about a year before I started my business I worried about whether my products were a good idea and if people would like them enough to buy them. Stopping over-thinking everything and actually getting started was the biggest challenge for me.” But now, “it’s great seeing people’s reactions to my work online especially when it’s something which I had doubts about. I get so excited when people send me pictures of them wearing my work or what they’ve created themselves with my textile designs.”
You can find Teja’s surface designs in her Spoonflower shop and her handprinted tights in her Etsy shop.
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With thanks to Teja for sharing her words and images.
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And I am sure Teja would love to hear stories of technical ingenuity from all you inventive makers out there! When faced with a crisis, what did YOU do?
Such gorgeous design work! I just had a look in her Etsy shop and oh my! How adorable are the fawn tights?! Possibly the cutest tights ever. 🙂