Cole & Son was founded in 1875 by John Perry, the son of a Cambridgeshire merchant, in Islington, north London, an area famous for 190 manual block printing companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. Throughout the nineteenth century, the manufacture printed for all the most famous large companies of the time, including Jeffrey & Co, Sanderson and Shand Kydd.
At the beginning, the company built machines that allowed the reintroduction of ancient processes and the restoration of the flocking process, invented in Holland in 1680, imitating the cut velvet. In 1941 the company was purchased by A. P. Cole, owner of Cole & Son (Wallpapers) Ltd, with showrooms and offices on Mortimer Street in central London.
The Cole & Son archive was already very rich and included projects created by JC Crace & Son to furnish many stately homes, palaces, castles and theaters in Britain and overseas, including AW Pugin’s wallpaper designs for the Palace of Westminster. The merger of the two companies in 1938 meant that they became custodians of the most significant collection of wooden printing blocks in Great Britain.
Today, the Cole & Son archive is made up of about 1,800 drawings, 350 screen printing designs and a huge quantity of original drawings and wallpapers, which represent all styles: among these are some of the most important drawings from the 18th century to date, having provided wallpapers for many historic houses including Buckingham Palace and Parliament.
The magnificent archive is a source of inspiration for the designs of the new collections: the designs are carefully selected, adapted and colored by the company’s internal designers and printed by craftsmen to produce wallpapers faithful to the character of the original document. Cole & Son continues to create innovative and unique products through current collections, which reflect the long and glorious history, as well as the continuous passion for the most surprising wallpapers.
Among the many collections that characterize the catalog we can mention: Bonatic, Contemporary, Historical Royal Palace, Folie, Archive Traditional, Icons … recently the company has also provided a collection of very high quality fabrics, with the same themes, decorations and colors, to create coordinated or original contrasts. A separate discussion must be reserved for the Fornasetti collection: Cole & Son, together with Barnaba Fornasetti, son of the master Piero Fornasetti and custodian of the enormous cultural and craftsmanship heritage of the luxurious Italian design atelier, presents a timeless collection of 19 sophisticated wallpaper with a dreamlike charm, with the same values ??and artistic techniques, which the atelier uses to create handmade furniture, accessories and porcelain with an aesthetic typical of the Italian luxury concept of the 1950s: Library, Bastoni, Nuvole, Ex- Libris, Aquarium, Theater, Secret Keys, Reflection, Mediterranean, Flying Machines … are among the most iconic dream titles in the collection.