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PHOTOS: ROSS GIBLIN/STUFF // WORDS: KYLIE KLEIN NIXON

Ben Masters loves wallpaper. After a career in interior design and a move to a vineyard in Martinborough where his wife Helen is a vintner, the couple set up Paperhands, a screen printed wallpaper business which uses time-honoured techniques for creating beautiful, unique, Kiwi-inspired papers.

BEN: he house has been a wor in progress. We’ve been in here about si years now, and we’ve

ust re-done the itchen area. It’s an older house so as always there are things that either need touching up, repairing or replacing

It was in pretty reasonable condition when we bought it in 01 . he couple who set up the vineyard that we live on moved the house here from

orrinsville, I thin , and did a lot of wor to it then. ot quite sure how much re- igging of walls they did, but it’s obviously been modernised and opened up.Itwas ustamatterofusma ingitabitmore li ewewanted.

We’ve done some more serious wor to the bathrooms and it chen, but essentially there st is ust redecorating, and putting up wallpaper.

[My wife] Helen is the winemaker at Ata

Rangi. he fruit from this bloc was going to Ata angi, that’s where Helen had seen the fruit she lied. he said to the couple that owned it, if they ever thought about selling we’d be interested. o we ended up buying it in 01 . We’re still selling the fruit to Ata angi.

I’ve got a bac ground in interior design, mainly commercial, hospitality stuff. But in the last 10 years we’ve had the wallpaper business, which is mainly me. Helen’s very busy, full time ma ing wine, but certainly she’s got a pretty ama ing creative vision. oa lot of a per hands is driven by Helen, wew or together. But I end up actually doing a lot of the wor myself with some help. I quite en oy doing a bit of handyman stuff.

I’ve hung a bit of paper. ormally if it’s our own paper, I’ll offer. We’ve hung quite a lot in our previous house and here.

Hanging paper is not difficult, but it can be a little intimidating if you haven’t done it before. nce you’ve done it once, really, it’s pretty straightforward – particularly in a newish build with nice flat walls.

lder places, where the walls maybe aren’t very straight, or surfaces are a bit rough, it can be a little tricier.u st tae your time and don’ t try to get it done too quic ly. A sharp nife is important.

aperhands came about because we were loo ing for paper for our own house and all the interesting stuff we found tended to be hand-made and imported. I thought, hey, yeah, I could do that . The process that’s used all over the world is screen printing and it’s really quite physical and simple. ou don’t need a lot of machinery and that mae sit reasonably achievable.

I guess the tric iest bit for us when we got started was that there was no one total to about how you did it. here was a company in arterton for a long time, called ason Handpapers. here’s quite a neat little boo written about them by oug Ford

en ins, who’s an art writer. he boo had quite a lot of technical info, photos of the tables, that sort of thing. In between, we went for a little visit to the 0s Australian wallpaper designer Florence Broadhurst’s factory in ydney.

We decided it was impossible to predict what peoplewouldli e,sowethought, well,we’ll ustdo what we lie and hopefully other people will lie it as well . he inspiration for our designs come from, one, not being afraid to do something a little different; and two, we are in ew ealand, and in 010 there weren’t a lot of ew ealand-inspired papers.

ertainlybeingin ew ealandfeltli eitwas a good chance to use the flora and fauna. It’s things

that I en oy drawing and painting.

I love the Paperhands Kakapo paper. That’s quite a new one. It’s fun to print because it’s got four colours in it.

About five years ago we started printing a range of papers from the Mason Handpapers range. Resene had all the positives for making the screens and some sample books. They asked if we could reprint some of that range for them.

We went through the process of choosing some patterns and getting the screens made and doing some new colour ranges for them. Some wallpapers in our house are Mason papers.

A couple of the other papers in the house are ours – the one in the kitchen, and the one in the bedroom. They’re different layers of a couple of our designs.

The one in the kitchen has two designs, one on top of the other, and the one in the bedroom has got about 16 different layers of pattern. That’s a chance for us to have a bit of fun and do something different with those patterns and create something a little different.

Through the 80s and 90s people moved away from wallpaper, and a lot of spaces became not necessarily sterile, but safe, everything was painted the same colour.

But paper gives you the idea that you can have a bit of fun in the space, express yourself and do something that has a bit more attitude.

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2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

2021-11-27T08:00:00.0000000Z

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