Blight Fever 

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The inspiration of this project is to align design techniques with the historic practices of story-telling of folklore and mythology. Specifically, the project is focused upon representing lesser known sinister local legends. This will be achieved in part by the seeping and bleeding of designs to represent the dark tales that haunt medieval towns, and the creation of narrative elements to highlight individual stories. Exploration will also be performed into the modernisation of block-printing and how it can be incorporated into contemporary designs, primarily through the techniques borne by William Morris of hand-carving wooden patterns that were subsequently printed directly onto wallpaper. This has been chosen as suitable as the pigments used in the printing of this wallpaper included arsenic (As), and was later believed to have been a factor in Napoleon’s death as a result of arsenic poisoning via this “lethal wallpaper”. Therefore, through the theme of the designs and this specific method of creation, the project is consistent both in substance and in form.