Margo Selby is first and foremost a craftsperson—an artist who is constantly reinventing herself by playing with texture, materials, and patterns in new, innovative ways. Her modernist style incorporates geometric motifs in diverse combinations, which recently led to a textile collaboration with Designtex and West Elm that includes high-performance contract textile Triform, showing off bold triangular motifs made from varying configurations of stripes.
As a child growing up in London, she always had a penchant for fabric and trained in woven textile design at Chelsea College of Art, followed by a postgraduate degree from the Royal College of Art. It was during her time working for industrial mills that “I combined my handwoven constructions with industrial machinery,” Selby notes. Textured fabrics are a hallmark of her eponymous textile design company, and she is particular about where she sources her wool and silk, choosing trusted craftspeople in Scotland and India, respectively.
Selby’s woven artwork, including the 16-piece Pick by Pick series, combines subtle, contrasting tones.
Besides her daring use of contrasting colors “to create lively harmonization,” what makes Selby standout is her versatile textile offerings, including furniture, artwork, and rugs. “Fabric is the starting point for anything I make,” she says, adding that she wants to remove the boundaries associated with textile work (repeat sizes, sampling considerations, and durability).
It’s fitting that many of her creations are featured in a number of hospitality settings—the Nobu Hotel Shoreditch in London and the Crown Casino in Australia, to name a couple—because Selby sees herself akin to an architect with the warp, like a building’s foundation, becoming the backbone of the fabric and an integral part of the design. As she says, when it comes to the loom, “it feels like I am painting with yarn.”
West Elm fabric collection
