A scion, properly speaking, is a young shoot, the fresh growth grafted onto an established plant, and by extension the youngest descendant of an old family. It is a well-chosen name. Scion is the junior member of the Sanderson Design Group, the British design dynasty whose roots run back more than a century and a half through grand old houses such as Sanderson, Morris & Co and Zoffany, with their hushed archives and their eighteenth-century printing blocks. Created in 2012, Scion arrived into all that heritage with a cheerful lack of reverence and a simple, faintly radical idea: that interiors need not be serious to be good.
It has stayed close to its roots in the most literal way. The designs are dreamed up by a small team in a studio in Leicestershire and printed, as it happens, in a factory next door, so the whole enterprise remains reassuringly, unfashionably British and made within sight of the people who draw it.
"The word scion means a young shoot. It is the perfect name for the cheerful youngest of a grand old design family."
The fox who became a star
Every brand should be so lucky as to have a Mr Fox. Long, lean and wearing an expression somewhere between a smile and a smirk, Scion's signature fox first loped across a wallpaper more than a decade ago and promptly became one of the most recognisable motifs in the modern British home. He has since gained a smaller, friendlier incarnation in Little Fox, along with a supporting cast that includes Spike the hedgehog and Pedro the penguin, but it is the original who did something rather important: he reminded a nation of decorators that a wall is allowed to make you smile.
Scion, Mr Fox, Spirit and Soul
Around that sense of fun sits an aesthetic drawn squarely from the mid-century, from the clean-lined optimism of nineteen-fifties Britain and Scandinavia. Expect stylised florals, confident geometrics and a palette of zesty, uplifting colour, the sort of designs that lift a room rather than furrow its brow.
Scion, Poppy Pod, Marine (Pomona)
Scion, Ditsy Daisy, Blush (Pomona)
"Mr Fox did something rather important: he reminded British homes that a wall is allowed to make you smile."
Not just for the nursery
It would be a mistake, though, to file Scion under children's rooms and leave it there. For one thing, its playful prints are wasted if confined to the nursery: a grinning fox or a bold geometric is just as much fun in a downstairs cloakroom, a kitchen or a home office, in any room, really, that could do with cheering up. For another, there is a quieter, more grown-up side to the brand that is easy to overlook. Its more recent collections lean into the calmer end of the Scandinavian spectrum, the natural textures of wabi-sabi and the serene, pared-back balance of Japandi, alongside oversized abstracts such as the boulder-shaped Lohko. Scion, it turns out, does soothing quite as well as it does joyful.
Scion, On the Vine, Cornflower and Kelly Green (Pomona)
Scion, Going (Lohko)
Scion, Falling Foss (Oakham)
That range is what makes it so genuinely useful. Reach for the characterful prints and the zesty colours where you want energy and a smile, and for the textural neutrals where you want calm, knowing that both arrive with the same clean, contemporary, unpretentious confidence. As with any bold colour or pattern, order a sample and see it in your own light first, and take some comfort in the fact that Scion's papers are non-woven and paste-the-wall, and British-made into the bargain.
Scion, Oakham
Scion, Matchsticks (Oakham)
Scion, Fringed Poppy Print, Oakham (fabric)
Scion, Falling Foss Weave, Oakham (fabric)
For a brand named after a young shoot, Scion has grown up rather gracefully, without ever quite losing the grin. In a design world that can take itself terribly seriously, that turns out to be a rare and rather cheering thing.
Ready to bring Scion into your home?
Browse the full Scion wallpaper collection and its matching fabrics at Wallpaper Sales, and order a sample before you commit, colour is the whole point with a brand like this, and it never reads quite true on a screen.
