Flora Duke

Flora is a printed textile designer and screen printer from London. She focuses on large scale prints, which respond to her main source of inspiration - natural forms and the ambiguous shapes found within.

Flora established her own brand in 2020 which she plans to continue to build, whilst freelancing and consulting with other companies. She has experience within the Fashion industry and has sold prints at Première Vision in Paris. As her final collection shows, she focuses on both the body and interior spaces within her print designs and believes it is important to question and create a relationship between both within her work.

The process of screen printing is an integral part to her practice. As creative processes have undoubtedly had to become more digital throughout the pandemic, it has only highlighted the importance of hand craft within her design development and personal handwriting.

RE-CONNECT / Inhabiting The Landscape

‘I cannot write anything about landscape without writing about the human figure and human spirit inhabiting the landscape.’ - Barbara Hepworth, 1966

Throughout this project, I focused on re-connecting and building the relationship of print for the body with print for space as well as re-connecting and immersing the body within the landscape and interior settings.

This collection focuses on the exploration of the vastness of scale in nature through the micro and macro scales, analysing how small we as humans are in vast open spaces and questioning the link between this and the idea of print scales for the body conventionally being scaled down, much in comparison to those in our interior settings.

With particular reference to Troup Head Gannet Colony on the North-East Coast of Scotland, a location in which I have a strong connection to, I wanted to challenge this notion of scale. My final collection consists of large scale screen printed and appliquéd prints on linen and wool to be used on both the body and within interior settings - highlighting the importance of keeping the impactful print scale the same across both. The abstract 'garments' within the collection are to create the idea and illusion that the landscapes are expansive of the body, using the prints to immerse and blend the body within interior spaces, reflecting the way in which vast areas of nature are expansive over us as humans.

Initial Fabric Collages - Body Immersed In Space

Screen Printed Collection - Highlights

Linen Floor Cushion with Muslin Curtains

Screen Prints on Linen

Body and Space Visualisations - Digital — These visualisations show the blending of the large scale prints across both the body and the interior space

Gorse Print on Linen as Curtains

Appliquéd Screen Print on Body

Body and Space Visualisations - Digital — These visualisations show the blending of the large scale prints across both the body and the interior space