Michael Woodcock and Lara Apponyi of Work + Sea have cornered the market on whimsy. Their wallcoverings span the mystical and the kitschy, but are also thoughtful and charming. Some have called their aesthetic “haphazard yet elegant,” says Woodcock, and “sort of medieval, ’70s futuristic,” adds Apponyi. “It’s hard to pin down,” she says, but it’s “a little bit of all those words.”
The English-born Apponyi and Woodcock (he then grew up in Florida) met while at Raad Studio in New York, and found that Apponyi’s fine art training and Woodcock’s architecture background meshed well together. While working late on a restaurant project with a ’70s beach club concept for the former King and Grove Hotel (now the McCarren Hotel & Pool) in Brooklyn, New York, the pair dreamed up a wallpaper and upholstery design that was informed by “the sets of Wes Anderson and mustard and pink tones,” Apponyi says. “A twirl and repeat of a pineapple with little shrimp and banana leaves” became the Prawn Cocktail pattern and their first collaboration under the now Los Angeles-based Work + Sea.
Work + Sea’s inaugural project, the Prawn Cocktail pattern, playfully features shrimp and banana leaves circling pineapples.
That was just the start. Their Mixed Media series uses ballpoint pens, watercolor, and oil paint to look as though the stripes were scribbled directly on the walls; retro glamour is highlighted in the Flamingos on the Line pattern; and the twee Monkeys of Ghazipur features monkeys swinging in a field of posies. Recently, they collaborated with fashion designer Jason Wu on his new Grey line, which includes an amusing camouflage cat print, as well as a multicolored and lush foliage-meets-disco ball pattern. Next up: a “dark, dreamy, trippy wallpaper with mushrooms and large-scale jellyfish,” Woodcock describes, followed by a series of cushions embroidered in antique tapestries. “It’s amazing to sit on the floor and roll around on the carpet, and these tapestries add this sexy layer to it,” he explains. Also on the boards is their first restaurant project for Work + Sea—a dog friendly café in Manhattan’s East Village.
Their Mixed Media wallpaper uses ballpoint pens, watercolor, and oil paints to create the illusion that the stripes are directly drawn on the walls.
The duo attribute their success and expansion largely to one another. “We feed off each other in all the creative and inspiration elements,” he explains. And because they work and live together, “most of our ideas come from when we’re outside the studio, when we’re relaxing in the natural world and then we’ll have that ‘Ah-ha!’ moment,” Apponyi adds. “We’re very close friends. It’s a very playful process.”
