How Chasing Paper is changing the wallcoverings game, one patterned panel at a time.

You could say that siblings Elizabeth and Mike Rees were born to be printmakers. Growing up in Milwaukee, their grandfather owned Kubin-Nicholson, a grand-format printing company that their father and uncle eventually inherited. Mike spent high school summers working at the company’s production facility, getting a firsthand glimpse at the possibilities of commercial printing, as well as the ins and outs of the business. “At the time, they were selling mostly large-scale advertisements, including billboards and bus wraps,” he recalls, “but I learned a lot about the capabilities of printers.”

Elizabeth, on the other hand, wasn’t nearly as interested in the family business. She studied journalism in college, and was in Paris working toward a master’s degree in global communications when she was offered a full-time position at the company’s New York headquarters. “It took awhile to agree to it,” she explains. “Moving to New York was a big selling point for me.”