Diving into our New Collection, Autumn Trends and more with East End Prints Founder Helen Edwards.

Following the launch of our new Autumn '24 collection, we sat down with East End Prints founder Helen Edwards to find out more about the inspiration behind this range. Read on to find out her process, favourite artists and more.

So Helen, how did you find the inspiration behind our Autumn range?

We go out to a lot of galleries and art fairs and have a lot of trend packs sent to us, my range manager and I like to be on it when it comes to trends, we like to set them and not necessarily follow them so I would say what's really important for us is to look wide, and this campaign has been huge. It goes off in so many wonderful directions and I think we were finding so much great art that we felt covered a lot of the trends we were seeing that I think we just wanted to bring it all in in the next four months.

If you had to pick one, which would be your favourite print from the collection?

I'm gonna have to go for ' sifted summit'. I think because I used to be a keen snowboarder until my knees packed up.

But I think the whole surrealist element of  Vertigo Artography is absolutely brilliant, there's humour in there. I used to be a photographer as well before I ran this so there's some sentiment around why I like this piece and I think the whole work was completely bonkers when I saw it, I just thought this is great, let's get it in. I think that's what makes us a little bit different, you know we're experimenting with things so we like to push the boundaries of what wall art can be.

I think a good print to sum up this campaign is 'Normal is Boring' by HollieGraphik.

Absolutely, that's a good way to describe it, we're really going off in different tangents.

Although as a complete opposite to that, we have done some wonderful kind of  Scandi vibes which are very pared back painterly abstracts because we know this always sells. Iris Lehnhardt is one of the artists that I feel does this really well.

When I launched East End Prints, we never used to have painterly abstracts, it was something personally that I never liked. But I realised there is a market for it. So it's not necessarily about what we like, as individuals, it's about actually expressing the interests of all our customers.

Who would you say are your favourite artists in this collection?

Ooh, there are so many. Well, we’ve been working with  Sophie Ward for quite some time now and I think this series with the crystals and the whole idea of some ‘woo’ is really wonderful. I think she is the gift that keeps on giving. She doesn't produce a huge amount of work, not that prolific, but when she does produce a series, it's absolutely brilliant and bang on and they're some of my personal faves in there as well.

We've got  Mother & Sun Studio, we have a wonderful collection of autumnal-like archive work based around William Morris and real sort of poster art that's quite full of wildlife and animals and nature. These ones are really earthy and they remind me of all those autumnal colours.

Speaking of Autmunal colours, what are your favourite things about autumn decor?

I think the whole idea of autumn, not that we're seeing it with the weather at the moment, is all about cosying in, isn't it? Hunkering down? I think somebody said it was less than a hundred days till Christmas the other day so it's that idea that the seasons change outside, you see the colours change, the dryness of the leaves going brown, and we always try and bring some of these influences in.  Brown has become quite a popular colour in home decor and made a bit of a resurgence recently, and we're really celebrating that but doing it in a really more modern way.

What are your favourite trends this autumn?

Oooh favourite trends. So I think the collage, surrealism is absolutely fantastic, the idea that it is kind of a bit crazy and a bit off the wall and it takes the work in different directions. It reminds me of some of the things that were trendy in the 70s and 80s and I think that trends come back around again andI think that's what it really grasps, the element of some of those things. And even with some of the  music art is based around that, the music from the 80s and even the 90s as well so I think there's a good range in that kind of looking back 50 years to move forward.

Looking forward for a minute, what can we expect from East End Prints next?

Oh, next we have some wonderful things lined up for you. Obviously, we're out and about looking at shows and going to artists' studios, really aware of some new looks.

We've seen a lot of fantastic illustrations coming through, but really it’s some of the painterly  food and drink that's still, absolutely flying out so, I mean, watch this space for some more food and drink for next year.

We always have some wonderful new things in our music section and we're thinking ahead obviously, to Valentines already around those images that could potentially have love interest as well.