Cattywumpus is a good word. I don’t know how it is spelled.

It’s the word that came to mind when I rounded the bend near the dressing rooms at Liberty of London back in September. There I came face to face with one of Deborah Bowness’ dress images. It was green.

Only I didn’t know it was by Deborah Bowness, and I didn’t know that it was wallpaper, handmade in England. I just knew that I loved it.

 

 

As luck would have it, a similarly wonky layered photograph of a lamp popped up in one of the many design websites I troll. It seemed like the creative hand behind the lamp matched my memory of that layered dress. The source was discovered!

Like David Hockney paintings, that I came to love back in the early 1980s, Bowness layers images up against each other in ways I can only call cattywumpus.

Ordinary becomes extraordinary.