Founded in 1985, Fée Halsted began Ardmore Studio as a place to mentor local talent, developing an unmistakeable style that has become the house's signature. A celebration of local flora and fauna, Ardmore has partnered with Cole & Son since 2017 creating wallpaper collections that embody the vibrant nature of the KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
What does 'Baobab' mean to you and the wider Ardmore team?
The Baobab tree is the “Tree of Life”, it is resilient. It also represents community, as it shelters and nourishes many different species of birds and critters that coexist together within its large, root-like branches and trunk. To exist and thrive you have to live by the Zulu word Ubuntu, “We are because of others.” No man is an island, and the word Ubuntu is practised at Ardmore. Our values are family.
The Cole & Son collection we have created together is just another extension of family and collaboration. The bird motifs were borrowed from Ardmore imagery, and their naïve rendering adds freshness and fun to the Baobab flowers, pods, and foliage, which are rendered in a more sophisticated European style, resulting in an elegant design, yet fresh in its ornithological motifs.
What has the experience been like working with Cole & Son for the last decade? What is that synergy like between both design houses who are based in such different corners of the world?
Working with Cole & Son over the last decade has been an exciting and uplifting experience, and one we proudly appreciate. A company as established as Cole & Son, with a Royal Warrant and worldwide recognition, has exposed our brand to new audiences allowing Ardmore to be recognised for its incredible designs.
Discovering, by chance, the Satara wallpaper in a Cartier store was such a proud moment for my daughters and I. It was also deeply emotional as the design was inspired by an experience I had of watching a mother leopard with her two cubs in a bush willow tree near Satara in the Kruger National Park. The fact that a brand like Cartier recognised this beautiful design and used it in their store meant so much to me because it holds such a special memory of travelling with a dear friend.
The synergy between the design houses of Ardmore and Cole & Son is beautiful because we offer authentic South African fauna and flora pieces, and Cole & Son translates them into enchanting wallcoverings.
For previous collections, Ardmore ceramic pieces have informed the wallpaper designs, though, Baobab was born in London and has since inspired new ceramics. How did this change your design process? How have your artists approached adapting Cole & Son’s artwork?
The first Ardmore collection was born out of a creative collaboration between Ardmore and former Creative Director Shauna Dennison, who found our ceramics in a small curiosity shop, Creel and Gow, in New York. Shauna was captivated by the naïve style of Ardmore’s two-dimensional motifs painted on the ceramics.
The second collection, Jabula, was created under former Managing & Creative Director Marie Karlsson, who travelled to South Africa with her team of artists to visit Ardmore's studios. This was a more sophisticated collection inspired by our three-dimensional ceramic sculptures.
Baobab was envisaged by Marie, who wanted a collection abundant in florals, fruits, landscapes and waterfalls. This collection became more of a collaboration between her and I, and I assisted her in realising this vision by identifying the right African flora and fauna to use and then steering her toward the right Ardmore ceramic works for inspiration.
In Baobab, we used bird illustrations from Ardmore artists. For Royal Giraffe, we used giraffes from early Ardmore ceramics, where the spots have inner stars sgraffitoed into them to keep the decorative element typically seen in Zulu craftsmanship and early Ardmore painting, while adding thorn tree flowers and seed pods.
In Injisuthi, cheetah sculptures were drawn to fit the wallpaper scene. The name comes from the beautiful Injisuthi area of the Champagne Castle region where Ardmore began, in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, which is abundant in waterfalls.
Protea Panthera was taken from a sculptural leopard vase where leopard heads emerge from South Africa’s national flower, the protea.
It has been great fun to then re-inspire the ceramic artists with the Baobab wallpapers and see how they interpreted the new designs back into three-dimensional works of art. The Baobab exhibition at Patrick Mavros London (19th-29th May 2026) showcases these magnificent ceramics, where Cole & Son wallpapers, originally inspired by one or two ceramic works, have now been reinterpreted by several individual Ardmore artists, who in turn have created different three-dimensional versions of the two-dimensional wallpapers.
I think the creative mind has many versions of interpretation, so the possibilities are endless and infinite. Just like in nature, millions of individuals originate from one species. It is an organic, harmonious flow backwards and forwards. A change of colour to one design alters a work completely, and adding a different floral motif or enlarging or shrinking scale also changes an image.
How do you feel both design houses work in harmony so that the collections are authentic to both?
Cole & Son and Ardmore work harmoniously together because we are aligned and respect each other’s values in creating an authentic luxury product. We both aim to create art, and our purpose is to give the customer a product that exemplifies 'living art'. Time is luxury. No detail is omitted. Even the wallpaper books are artworks in themselves.
Have you adapted your design process since collaborating with partners in the interior design industry?
Through working with partners in the international interior design industry, we have definitely adapted and grown our ceramic craftsmanship. Our colours are now more sophisticated and considered, and with excellence and pride we push for better functionality and craftsmanship. One could say a more elegant and refined product has emerged. The sculptors are proud and more confident, and they now push boundaries in clay. Much larger works have emerged, and some works are purely sculptural with no function at all. Animals and plants are also more lifelike in appearance, and while the earlier, more naïve works have fallen into their own genre, the fun pieces filled with joie de vivre still maintain a strong presence.
