design boutique Friday fave: Ella Doran scoops two Grand Designs Awards

There was no competition this week for the position of design boutique’s Friday favourite – Ella Doran’s double win at this year’s Grand Design Awards has been the talk of mydeco.

Image credit: Ella Doran

Her GEO wallpaper scooped the top prize in the wallpaper and fabric category, and was overall winner of The Evening Standard’s Homes & Property Product of the Year.

When I got in touch with Ella to congratulate her she was obviously over the moon: ‘I was very chuffed to have won the category for best wallpaper/textile design at The Grand Designs Awards, as wallpaper is still a new area for us. We were applauded for standing out and looking ultra modern, yet it’s a design that could work in a baroque or old fashioned home too.’

Image credit: Media 10

‘It was an even bigger surprise to win the Evening Standard Best product of the year for the same product, and Barabara Chandler said some lovely things about me,’ she added.

She certainly did. Barbara, design writer and one of the judges of the awards (alongside Sebastian Conran, Orla Kiely and Oliver Heath) heaped praise upon Ella. She said: ‘Most wallpapers are pretty flowery and it is difficult to find one that is truly contemporary, which makes our winner very special. And it is by someone also very special, who has pioneered the art of turning photographs in to pattern. So who else could it be than the inimitable Ella Doran for her wallpaper GEO?”.

Image credit: Ella Doran

A few weeks ago I went to Ella’s shop at 46 Cheshire Street, London, and instantly noticed the GEO collection: striking wallpaper, table and trays set up along the back wall, pulling your eyes into the pattern. It really is an eye-catching design, in colour and geometry. At the time, Ruth Timmins-Williams, Ella’s lovely Personal Assistant, told me it was their favourite: ‘We’re really into GEO and our newest thing is GEO Play.’ She then showed me a ‘never before seen’ scarf (with hemlines still to be sewn!) that featured a bustling, colourful GEO print.

And it looks like they had every reason to be proud of GEO. Ella’s wallpaper, designed from photographs that she took in Berlin, beat 250 submissions at the prestigious Grand Designs Awards, which is now in its fifth year.

Only this morning Ella told me that ‘GEO is a design that I have wanted to create for some time. It’s a wallpaper that appears to be very 3D and graphic, thanks to my photography coupled with my team on the computer in post production, working the design into a seamless repeat – and we have achieved just that. We can also produce the design as a mural or on roller blinds to a scale of your choice!’

Image credit: Ella Doran

See more of Ella Doran’s products on design boutique and read our blog  of my recent visit to her shop: mydeco goes under Ella Doran’s umbrella (Ella Ella)