James Randolph Rogers began working with historic wallpapers in 2007, as a Conservation Assistant in the South West of England. Two years were spent conserving, restoring wallpapers for palaces and stately homes across the country. He now is based in Cornwall and uses pre-1830 techniques to make Domino wallpapers. Fine Cell Work had the good fortune to meet him at Decorex (the annual interior design exhibition) which took place at the exhibition centre at Olympia in London in autumn 2019.

James works with hand carved pear wood blocks and creates these wonderful designs with hand mixed distemper paints. He is renowned in the world of design for his talent in painstaking recreation of historic wallpapers and recreating wallpapers from found fragments. We saw the Nuremberg 1770 design on his exhibition stand in amongst many of his other stunning designs which are printed on sheets not rolls. 

We were immediately drawn to Nuremberg 1770 as a potential cushion design, to celebrate St Valentine’s Day or for a wedding gift.  We spoke to James about whether we could use the image of the couple toasting each other’s health as an embroidery for the Fine Cell Work stitchers to embellish. James explained that had developed the wood cut from an ancient book of German needlework, which brought the image full circle. He very kindly allowed us carte blanche to reproduce the design and we used a digital print on line with embroidered embellishment to add a wonderful celebratory image to the Fine Cell Work range.

We called it the “Wedding Toast” and the finished cushion has been extremely popular. The combination of embroidered details to enhance James Randolph Rogers original print work to great effect.

Shop The Wedding Toast cushion.