About
About
Hi, I’m Lucy.
La Palma Collective is my excuse to paint things and then put them on everything.
I’m Lucy Browning, an artist and designer living on the Costa Blanca in Spain. I’ve spent most of my career working in design, branding and creative direction, but La Palma came from wanting to get back to actually making things with my hands.
Every pattern starts with me — usually paint, paper and quite a lot of colour — before becoming fabric, cushions, table linen, wallpaper, gift wrap and whatever else I decide it would look good on.
I like things that feel handmade and a little imperfect. I like houses full of art and strange things found at markets. I like mixing expensive things with things that cost €3. I definitely don't think everything in a room needs to match.
Guy, my husband, works on La Palma with me too. He’s a designer and photographer and generally the person who makes my approximately 400 ideas slightly more practical.
We work from Spain, surrounded by two small children, piles of samples and considerably more fabric than any normal household needs.
Inspiration
Mostly things I want to look at
I’m constantly collecting references.
Paintings. Old textiles. Folk art. Italian houses. Spanish houses. Hotel matchbooks. Ceramics. Fruit packaging. Gardens. Vintage books. A particularly good striped umbrella. Something I saw through the window of a house while driving past.
Living in the Mediterranean obviously sneaks into everything too — the colours here are hard to ignore — but La Palma isn't really about creating a Mediterranean look.
It’s more about that attitude to colour and living.
Things don't need to be terribly serious.
I paint every pattern by hand and then translate it into repeat without cleaning it up too much. If a line is a little wonky, good. That's probably the bit I like.
The good stuff
Things for houses that are actually lived in
I’ve never really understood rooms where everything belongs to the same collection.
The homes I love are the opposite. Things gathered over years. Something inherited next to something new. Art your child made next to art you saved up for. A brilliant tablecloth with completely unrelated plates.
That’s how I want La Palma to work too.
You might buy one cushion. Or cover an entire room in the same print. Mix three patterns together. Use the fabric for curtains. Throw the tablecloth over a table outside and leave it there all summer.
There aren't really rules.
Just good colour, good pattern and things I hope you'll want to live with for a very long time.