Jessie de Salis

Jessie de Salis is a Bristol based textile designer and screen printer who prints lengths of fabrics for homeware, upholstery, cushions, curtains, and more.

Lockdown was the beginning of Jessie’s screen printing journey. Like many creatives, lockdown pushed her out of London and she moved to Cornwall to live with her partner and his family. She tells us; “They are a family of artists and had a bunch of unused screens and a make shift exposure unit”. As a textile designer, up until this point Jessie had been making digital prints and artwork. She comments; “It was such a unique time to have the space and time to be able to start a new creative practice and create pints with my hands”. In a disused barn on a field near their house, Jessie set up her own DIY screen print studio. Sparrows and spiders kept her company. She mixed her own inks, worked out pattern repeats, and experimented with exposure times. Jessie set herself a project: to hand print fabrics and create a textiles installation inspired by the Cornish landscape.

Screen printing became the core part of her design process. After lockdown, Jessie built her own print studio in an old stable in Somerset. “It has been challenging, especially when I started. It turns out there is no “edit undo” when doing things by hand! But I’d fallen for the screen printing process. The final hand made product is beautiful. How the ink sits on the fabric, the way the colours work together, and the organic irregularities make the print feel alive.”

All of Jessie’s designs begin with paint and colour. “Colour is so important to my design process, and really informs the rest of the print,” says the printmaker. She takes a lot of inspiration from the natural world and ancient art; plants, local flora and fauna, sacred geometry, and ancient temples.

“It’s really important to me that my work should be sustainable,” comments Jessie. She continues; “I love linen because it’s grown in Europe, is a natural and biodegradable textile and has been used sustainably for thousands of years. It’s impossible to know every stage of fabric production and the impact this has on the planet. But printing by hand enables me to research and source fabrics and inks I can control what goes into my work.” 

Looking to the future, Jessie hopes to set up a textile screen printing studio in Bristol that she can share with other textile printers and dyers. With her cousin, she plans to create a reclaimed collection of cushions using linens and fabrics from charity shops and car boot sales, and stuffed with local sheep wool which she will weave and decorate with screen print and natural dyes. She states; “Sadly so much wool is chucked away by farmers – which gave us the inspiration for this project. It would be so nice to do something with it and give it a new life. I love the idea of creating something that is made complexly out of recycling things.“

@jessiedesalis
www.jessiedesalis.com

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