March Pattern – The Laurinda Spear Collection
March Pattern – The Laurinda Spear Collection
In March we look back on the Laurinda Spear Collection, a popular series of colourful Formica® Laminate patterns from 1997.
In the late 1990s, Formica Group embarked on a journey to create an innovative line of patterns with a respected voice in the design industry. The team in North America connected with Laurinda H. Spear, Principal and co-founder of the Miami-based firm Arquitectonica.
A top international architect, Laurinda was also relatable to interior designers. She and Formica Group collaborated on an energetic collection of new laminate designs to complement, not dominate, interior spaces.
The Laurinda Spear Collection featured eclectic designs with intertwining patterns and themes across four distinct series. In-house printing operations based in the UK and in France were used to bring these unique selections to life.
For the ‘Rainforest Series’, Laurinda worked with children to showcase art which conveyed their fears about the destruction of these important biomes.
Rainforest Kraft presented bold red and black icons of animals, hearts and stars. Rainforest for Rent combined these shapes with the For Rent pattern’s newsprint backdrop of classified ads in Mandarin, Spanish, French and English.
The ‘Ellipse Eclipse Series’ included four variations based on a birch woodgrain. Cherry and Natural Ellipse Eclipse showcased rotating and sometimes overlapping ellipses, a common symbol in Spear’s work.
Arial Fields, available in three colours, was inspired by the appearance of agricultural fields as seen from the sky.
Finally, the Millennium Series included Cosmos, with constellations and planets in reflective gold and silver, and Millennium, with its small, random rectangles.
Learn more about the Laurinda Spear Collection in this video: