On grief, joy, gathering and the long road from hand to print

Nic Brittin’s table linens have been on our radar for a while. Bold, playful, rooted in memory. The kind of thing that makes a table feel like it was set with intention. What we didn’t fully know, until we sat down with her for this interview, was the story behind how they came to exist at all.

Nic came to block printing through grief, through her mother’s sewing machine, through the need to make something real with her hands at a time when nothing much felt real. What began as a private, meditative process became, almost accidentally, a business. And over the last year she has been through the painstaking work of translating that handmade character into small-batch digital production, keeping every part of the process in the UK, working with printers in Leeds, a female-led screen printing company in London, and seamstresses in the South East.

She is also, it turns out, a near-daily swimmer at Parliament Hill Lido and a lover of Dim Sum. We think you’re going to like her.

Shop Nic Brittin's Collection Now.

F | You came to textiles from a career as a makeup artist. For anyone who doesn’t know your story, can you tell us a bit about how that shift happened?

NB | My mum died at the end of 2022. She was too young, I was too young, it was all awful. I inherited her sewing machine (which before her was my grandma’s) and to deal with the grief I started to get creative at home. Something I could do alone and unjudged. I started making curtains, took a pottery course, learnt to quilt and learnt to block print. I fell in love with the printing, it was so melodic and meditative. I showed a few people on social media and it basically exploded. People wanted to buy the fabrics and so I decided to turn it into a business.

F | The block printing process is slow, physical and entirely by hand. What drew you to it over other print techniques?

NB | The imperfectness of it. Every print is different, you have no control over that. And the designs don’t require you to be deeply detailed or organised like lino printing requires. Block printing is more about the placement, the patterns and the colour.

F | Your designs pull from some very specific visual memories, road trips, American holidays, the particular colours of a childhood split between London and the US. How directly do those references feed into what ends up on the fabric?

NB | They feel quite direct for me but I think to the wider world they are more abstract. Cirque, my design of red stripes and yellow dots, IS the 80s and 90s. So nostalgic, reminders of T-shirts I bought in LA and TV shows I watched. My airplane window design is literally airplane windows. I sat on planes flying back and forth from the States hundreds of times. I have so many weird plane stories. And the windows are just iconic.

F | You’ve spent the last year working out how to digitally reproduce your block-printed designs, which by your own description was a significant process. What made you want to do it, and what did getting it right actually involve?

NB | I have a mentor who sat me down one day and said ‘Nic, this is either a successful hobby and you carry on hand printing or if you want this to be the successful business I know it can be, you need to find another way of producing them.’ And that’s what I did. Digital printing (and sometimes screen printing) was the only viable option to me if I wanted to keep the designs made in the UK, and finding the right printers took a very long time. I wanted people who would listen to our (sometimes stupid) questions without judging us, and who had the highest quality possible.

F | The character of a hand-printed block is hard to replicate exactly. How did you approach preserving that quality in the digital version, and where do you feel you landed?

NB | Well, I can tell you it’s not as simple as scanning a hand-printed piece and digitally printing it! We quickly learnt that it loses all the hand-printed nuance. So we needed to digitally alter every print. There was a lot of back and forth with sampling. Colour matching was a really tricky part too. I feel like we landed in a great place. I’m so happy with the finished products. It was worth the twelve months (or more!) to get here.

F | You worked with a UK-based factory for the printing and a local seamstress to make up the finished pieces. Can you tell us a bit about those relationships and why keeping the production local mattered?

NB | I was learning about this industry and trade from scratch. I’d never studied it, I knew nothing at the beginning. I wanted to work with people we could visit, people who could send me samples quickly, people who could answer all and every question we had, and I wanted to put my money back into the UK. I’m so pleased I did that. The people we work with are amazing. Digital printers in Leeds, a female-led screen printing company in London and seamstresses in the South East. Yes, maybe it’s cheaper to have things made abroad but you can’t put a price on my sanity and stress levels.

F | What does the new digitally printed range make possible that the hand-printed work couldn’t?

NB | I can scale my business! I can send more than one piece out at a time, I can make wholesale work, and my back can finally have a break from bending over a printing table all day.

F | Your studio is in Chalk Farm, just down the road from the store. How much does being in London, in that particular part of it, feed into the work?

NB | Lido, one of my best-selling designs, is named after Parliament Hill Lido. You’ll usually find me there at 7am most mornings. It’s heaven on earth. That design just came so naturally. Camden, Hampstead, Chalk Farm are so quirky and creative and so green, and I need that around me at all times. This whole borough gives me the space and permission to come up with my designs. I love it here.

F | I absolutely love the core of your practice, built around the idea of gathering. Where does that come from and what does the table space mean to you?

NB | My family are entertainers and feeders. We spent most Sundays of my childhood eating Dim Sum in Chinatown. Our Christmas Eve tradition was tea at The Ritz. Most of my memories of being in the USA are around food. Skyline Chilli in Cincinnati, crab in Mississippi. There really isn’t a memory that doesn’t include a table. It means family to me.

Nic came to making through loss and ended up building something full of life. A table that means family, 7am Lido swims, a sewing machine passed down through three generations of women. There is something in Nic’s work that is hard to articulate but easy to feel, the objects on your table carry more than they appear to. To top it off Nic has a love for a part of London we have an unhealthy obsession over. We're so very glad she was so keen to be our summer guest maker and are really looking forward to the conversations about where her carefully crafted table linens take your family gatherings. 

Shop Nic Brittin's Collection Now.