Karen Robert isn’t interested in wallcoverings that simply fill a space. The Westchester, New York–based founder of Aux Abris is drawn to surfaces that make a statement, whether through texture, scale or pattern. “My mission from the beginning has been to create wallpaper that feels distinct, both in its design and in the material it’s printed on,” she tells Business of Home.
Growing up in Seattle, Robert became enamored with art at an early age. As a young adult, she embarked on a modeling career that sent her to Europe, where she lived for nearly 20 years. “While living in London, I married and started my family, and enrolled in a series of City & Guilds courses,” she says. “I studied curtain-making, upholstery, gilding and antique restoration—all traditional disciplines that taught me how things are actually made.”
Robert returned to the United States in 1999 with four young children, and began working as an interior designer on residential projects throughout New York. When her family moved into a large, turn-of-the-century house and needed wallpaper, she installed a digital printer in her basement and started making her own grasscloth designs. “There was a great deal of trial and error, and quite a lot of wasted wallpaper, before I understood how to make it work,” she says.
As she refined her process, Aux Abris was born. One of her inaugural offerings, Garden of Eden, is a metallic mural adorned in art deco botanical motifs—it remains one of her bestselling patterns. The company has grown, and Robert no longer prints from her basement. “Today we operate out of a 7,000-square-foot studio and warehouse in Yonkers, with five machines and a small team,” she says. “But the foundation of the work is still the same: a desire to make something myself.”
All of her designs begin with original artwork. She draws inspiration from an array of early-20th-century design movements, including art nouveau, Bauhaus and the Bloomsbury Group. Hand-painted elements are often scanned and layered into a composition, while digitally produced patterns are printed, reworked by hand, and then scanned back into the computer for refining. “I’m always trying to achieve a sense of balance, where no one element dominates, and where texture, scale and color work together,” she explains. “That balance is what ultimately distinguishes one design from another.”
Materiality plays a key role in Robert’s work. Her wallcoverings are cast on naturally touchable grounds such as grasscloth, linen and silk. “Materials can transform a design,” she says. “Each surface changes the way a pattern is experienced, how it reflects light, how it sits within a room.”
The artist debuted her latest collection, Curious Eve, in January at Paris Design Week. A collaboration with architectural color expert Eve Ashcraft, the series spans 17 Japanese art deco–style wallcoverings printed on metallic grasscloth and silk. The centerpiece of the series, Seaside Singerie, is a six-panel mural punctuated by parasol-carrying monkeys and shagreen-accented hills. “I needed hand-painted elements that weren’t part of my natural vocabulary, and she brought a different kind of energy to the work,” Robert says of working with Ashcraft. “There’s a sense of imagination in the collection that distinguishes it from my earlier designs.”
She plans to harness that creativity in a line of fabrics in the near future. “Upholstery offers a different kind of freedom,” says Robert. “It allows me to explore ideas in a new way, and I’m curious to see how that will evolve the language of the work.”
