The word chintz comes from the Hindi chīṇṭ, meaning spattered or speckled, and for three centuries it described the painted and printed cottons that sailed from India to Europe and changed the way the West decorated. A good deal of that story is written on the walls at Mallion & Knowles.
Mallion & Knowles is a young British design house, founded in 2018 to make fabrics and wallcoverings for homes and commercial interiors alike. Its designs are painted by hand and coloured in-house by its designer Barry Ward, a textile specialist of long experience, and that painted quality survives the journey to the roll. Brushstrokes stay visible, colours sit slightly unevenly, and nothing feels as though it came out of a computer. The house is also unusually loyal to its own archive: it says none of its collections are ever discontinued.
"Brushstrokes stay visible, colours sit slightly unevenly, and nothing feels as though it came out of a computer."
The Painted Tradition
The Traditional collection is the heart of the house, and its pattern names trace the old textile routes back to India. Amritsar and Varanasi are indiennes in the classic manner, great stylised blooms and curling leaves trailing across the wall, here in jade and a deep jewelled teal. Baroda, Kashmir and Raj continue the theme.
Pompadour climbs a slender stem hung with pineapples, pomegranates and open flowers, and in Lacquer Red it has all the confidence of an eighteenth-century drawing room. Vineyard is simpler and sunnier, its grapes and vine leaves tumbling over a golden amber ground. It would be a happy thing to find in a kitchen or around a dining table.
Amritsar, Jade
Varanasi, Teal
Pompadour, Lacquer Red
Vineyard, Amber
A Modern Hand
The same brush turns out something quite different in the Contemporary collection. Lava in Copper looks like the surface of cooled rock, all smoky russet and black, while Dumas sets a tight, ikat-like medallion in navy and tan that would turn a stairwell into the most interesting room in the house. Patina breaks colour into soft, layered blocks, like old paint on a gallery wall.
The Floral Style collection brings the painterly touch back to the garden. Peony blooms in loose cream petals over a cloudy jade ground, and Pavillion spreads broad tropical leaves in olive across a pale ground, the sort of paper that makes a bathroom feel like a glasshouse.
Lava, Copper
Dumas, Navy / Tan
Peony, Cream / Jade
Pavillion, Olive
"The same brush turns out something quite different, from cooled rock to a garden in full bloom."
Living with It
Chintz is having a moment again, and Mallion & Knowles offers it without the frills. The trick with the Traditional papers is to give them space: a whole room of Amritsar or Varanasi, with plain linen at the windows and dark wood underfoot, feels collected rather than fussy. The Contemporary designs work hardest in the rooms people pass through, a hallway, a cloakroom, a stair, where a strong surface can be enjoyed in small doses. For more ways with bold pattern, our wider maximalist wallpaper edit and our guide to living with more are good places to keep looking.
Hand-painted colour is subtle, and screens are not kind to it, so order a sample and look at it in daylight and lamplight before deciding. It is the brushwork you will be living with, after all.
Chintz began as a cotton that had been painted by hand, and the whole of Europe fell for it. Three hundred years on, Mallion & Knowles is making the same case on the wall: that a pattern carries more life when you can still see the hand that made it.
