Prints on a linen/cotton blend from Surface, Amy’s first collection with Figo
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND
Amy van Luijk has always designed and made things. Growing up in Christchurch, New Zealand, she sewed by hand until she was six years old, when her mother relented and let her use the sewing machine. Her passion for making led her to study textile design in Wellington on New Zealand’s North Island. “I actually produced a kind of fashion collection,” Amy says. “The theme was ‘wrapping,’ and I did things with lots and lots of layers. Prints, layers of organza, everything printed with different colors and then cut through to reveal the layers below.”
After graduation, Amy immediately moved to London and worked at several commercial print studios: “I inserted myself straight into it. I rung up some studios and asked, ‘Can I intern?’ In hindsight, it was quite a brave thing to do.” The London design scene was far removed from Amy’s concept- and art-based degree program. “That leap into commercial design was a big step, to suddenly realize that I needed to make lots of prints and sell them. I couldn’t labor over a single print for a week,” she explains. Her work primarily focused on interiors and designs for children; the designs produced in the commercial studios where Amy worked were offered for sale at international trade shows or sold directly to business owners for their collections.
“I quite like to work with accidents—things that happen spontaneously— and to capture all those little moments. Often the best bit of work will be in the corner of a page, really small.”
Following her time in London, Amy returned to New Zealand and continued her design work. She created stationery products and gift wrap with teNeues Publishing and illustrations for books and magazines, including Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple. Her work appears in the children’s television show Riddle + Squizz. Amy also designed bedding and coordinates for the Land of Nod, now Crate&Kids. Her playful, often deceptively simple motifs resonate with both children and adults. “I quite like to work with accidents—things that happen spontaneously—and to capture all those little moments. Often the best bit of work will be in the corner of a page, really small. It’s all about shape and line and movement, kind of a tension between control and spontaneity.”
Amy’s favorite medium is collage. She loves colored paper, and she loves cutting things up. She admits, with a smile, that she has drawers and drawers of paper—a collection she has been building since she began to work with collage. “My most charming work is always from little scraps of paper or just bits on my desk. That’s how I pick all my palettes. Sometimes there’s a little ripped-up bit, sort of just lying there, and that’s my new palette.” Amy also uses paint, pencils, pastels, and ink to capture her ideas. She loves to use crayons and Chinagraph pencils to create thick, imperfect lines. She often photocopies her drawings and cuts them up, scans them, and rearranges them on the computer. Amy says she would like to be “quicker in a digital sense” and put available technologies to more use when designing, but she always goes back to paper and glue.
Amy loves to find inspiration in new places. She has visited Japan several times, frequently as an extended stopover while traveling to or from the UK, and spent almost three weeks on a recent trip:
I just needed to open my eyes again. When I’m living somewhere, even a place as beautiful as New Zealand, my eyes don’t see things anymore when I see the same things over and over. When I go overseas or travel to a new city, I see everything. I see the rubbish on the street, the signs, the color combinations—all the little things. I really needed an injection of inspiration.
Amy’s sources range from everyday objects, like the scissors and pencils on her desk, to ikebana, the Japanese art of arranging flowers according to strict rules. She admits to having kept a library book on the subject for more than a year. “There’s a lot of Japanese design that really inspires my work. There’s something about the simplicity of it and about capturing the spontaneous, natural things that happen in a composition, things that aren’t centered, things that happen accidentally.”
Amy also finds inspiration in ceramics: “All the different forms and all the different textures and all the different patterns on the forms.” She not only admires pottery, but she also makes her own. She loves to translate her pen-and-ink drawings from paper to round, three-dimensional objects and see them in a new form. The same applies to her designs rendered on textiles. The drape of fabric and the texture of the substrate interact with the imagery and give Amy new ideas, and she often uses screen printing as part of her design process and exploration.
When designing, Amy creates full collections of prints. She starts with one or two patterns, often the most intricate, and adds prints within the same color palette. She presents the designs as a collection but says that they are not always purchased as a unit. “People move stuff around. I present them all together, but because they work for so many different applications, they can be used separately as well.” Typically, Amy does not design for a specific product:
When I’m in the designing zone, I just make what comes into my head. Or maybe I’ve made something and it turns into something else, and then the next step just reveals itself. I tend to go into making phases that last for a couple of days or a week. I just do lots and lots of drawings, and it’s afterwards that I look at the drawings and paintings I’ve made and think of what they would apply to. Sometimes when I think of designing for a specific application, it freezes me a little bit.
In 2017, Figo contacted Amy after seeing her work on Instagram. The team assembled a collection of Amy’s designs, and Surface was released in 2018. Printed in Japan on an unbleached 45/55 percent cotton/linen blend, the designs feature smooth waves, curves, and organic lines that show Amy’s talent for capturing movement and natural variation. Her collection Moonlit Voyage uses cut-paper shapes to create whimsical landscapes.
Amy works in a studio above two art galleries in Wellington.
She shares the space with seven designers who work in different fields, including graphic design, typography, and comic-book arts. She enjoys the camaraderie of other artists during the day but also enjoys working at night when her colleagues have gone home. She turns the music up and prepares her screen-printing equipment. “I have a really good time. I make a big mess and then get it tidied up before they come back the next day.”
While she dreams of one day having her own line of simple designs on linen, printed locally and sold in New Zealand, Amy loves what she is doing now. She looks forward to continuing to design fabric, creating more collections, and traveling the world to find new inspiration.
