Using Trauma to Launch a Global Wallpaper Business
By Michelle Madden
Photos by Alysia Kristan, AK Photography
It’s easy to like Sarah Von Dreele before even meeting her. “Coffee and tea at my place,” her email read. The doors of her red farmhouse are open in anticipation of the visit. The kitchen shelves are stocked with well-loved cookbooks. “I’m from an old New England family,” she says. “We pass everything down.” The cappuccino maker roars into action. “Almond or cow’s milk?” Von Dreele’s concern for the customer is evident.
Which perhaps partly explains her meteoric rise as an artist who creates graphic and floral wallpaper and textiles for brands such as Crate&Barrel/CB2, as well as under her own name. She has a showroom in every major market in the U.S. including the D&D building in Manhattan. (She sells only to the trade.) Her work has earned accolades including Interior Design magazine’s Best of Year 2023.
The studio above her garage is where her industriousness is evident. Ten feet of textiles neatly line up on hangers, rolls of wallpaper sit in bins, shelves are stocked floor to ceiling with samples, stacks of paintings done in gouache—where the process begins—sit under the work table.
“There must be thousands,” Von Dreele says. Everything is hyper organized and yet there is a looseness about the space: A gigantic paintbrush waits in a jar for its artist; photos and inspirational designs dot the walls; her daughter’s painting of a camel, its body parts labeled with red yarn, gets prime visibility; and a brochure that reads “Making Purpose From Trauma Helps Make Peace From Trauma,” lies on her work space. “That pretty much sums things up,” reveals Von Dreele.
Trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, Von Dreele worked for decades in corporate design, but when emotional trauma struck, she turned to painting as therapy, and her career path took a radical turn. “One night I sat at my dining table and just started to paint. I just kept painting and painting, and eventually realized this was more than just a personal healing process.”
Though clearly the market is responding to her work, it comes from a deeply authentic place. She shows me a pattern with muted, wavy lines. “This was inspired by the ocean after a thunderstorm at my beach house.” Her work is further personalized by naming the patterns after family members. “My grandfather was an architect in the navy. He always wanted to be a fine artist but his parents never let him. This one—Allyn—is named after him.” She holds up a floral pattern called Frances, after her grandmother. “She was very feminine—wore pantyhose every day of her life.”
Though her success has clearly not happened spontaneously, her best creative work occurs when she is not thinking. “Working in a place that is uncomfortable allows me to discover the unknown. It’s a risk, because you don’t know where you’re going.” She was leaving the next day for London, to meet with new producers to expand her market internationally. The process seems to be working.—Sarahvondreele.com
