Peg Norriss founders Barrie Benson and Chandra Johnson.
Lydia Bittner-BairdAs friends and beloved fixtures of the creative community in Charlotte, North Carolina, interior designer Barrie Benson and SOCO Gallery owner Chandra Johnson have long bonded over art and design. But only fairly recently did they merge their passions—and expertise—to create something of their own.
“All thanks to butterflies!” Benson laughs, telling the origin story of Peg Norriss, the female-artist-driven design studio the duo launched in 2018. It was winter, and Benson was in search of inspiration. “I was looking for a nod to Fornasetti and Josef Frank for a piece of furniture I was designing,” Benson says. She walked into SOCO and “smack dab, there it was”: a three-dimensional art installation called “Queen’s Flight,” featuring thousands of butterflies and birds, by the multidisciplinary artist Anne Lemanski.
To create “Queen’s Flight,” Lemanski, a North Carolina native, scanned images of butterflies and birds from 100-year-old books, glued them onto wood, cut out each one individually with a band saw, and arranged them on a wall. “It was a beautiful scene through which Anne told the age-old story of survival,” Johnson says of the piece. “It reminded Barrie of chinoiserie, but imagined in a different way. We quickly began brainstorming a way to translate it into interiors.” Benson was so taken with the exhibit that she reached out to Lemanski to ask if she could use some of the butterflies for an installation at High Point Market.
This bar area by North Carolina-based design firm Swell Decor makes a chic showcase for Queen’s Flight Panel Set in Green, a Peg Norriss wallpaper created in partnership with fine artist Anne Lemanski. Cabinets painted a coordinating green hue keep the focus on the showstopping pattern.
Laura Sumrak
As it happened, Lemanski said she had nearly 5,000 pieces left over from her show. She arranged them on a wall above a pair of chests, and Benson took photographs. The vignette was an instant hit, and people started asking where they could buy the butterflies.
At this point, however, after performing the painstaking process of cutting out 20,000 butterflies and birds, Lemanski was done. She never wanted to do it again. She was already working on her next project, which had nothing to do with butterflies. But Benson was obsessed with the photos she had taken of the butterflies above the chests, and couldn’t stop thinking, this should be wallpaper. With Lemanski’s permission, Benson used scanned images to create a wallpaper that she and Johnson installed in the bathroom at SOCO.
Once again, the butterflies were a sensational success. “Everybody was asking, ‘Where can we get this paper?’ And we’re like, Oh… We did not realize that people wanted this paper!” Benson says. “I’m an interior designer, and she’s a gallerist. We did not have the backup to be able to do this.”
Enter Schumacher. The Frederic team happened to be doing a photo shoot at Johnson’s home when Benson casually mentioned the butterflies to Schumacher’s creative director, Dara Caponigro. One thing led to the next, and before Benson and Johnson could blink, Peg Norriss, their burgeoning brand, was born. “It’s named for our two grandmothers, whose style, grit and grace have inspired us throughout life,” Johnson says. Schumacher exclusively produces the wallpapers—there are currently eight prints from three female artists, including the wildly popular Queen’s Flight Panel Set, by Anne Lemanski. A portion of sales is given to each artist—a fact of which Benson and Johnson are particularly proud, as supporting female artists was their ultimate goal.
Toile De Femmes wallpaper in Parchment, featuring a twist on a classic toile pattern from artist Jackie Gendel, adds a subtle note of whimsy to a breakfast room by Bourgeois McGinn Builders.
Dustin Peck
“It started as a passion project, marrying our two worlds of contemporary art and design,” Johnson says, “but we both quickly realized the opportunity for growth if we dedicated our time and resources.” Once Schumacher was on board, the duo set out to find their next artists. Soon Jackie Gendel and Liz Nielsen, both of whom had both exhibited at Johnson’s gallery, signed on to create wallpaper designs with the Peg Norriss team. “We try to encourage the artist to use past artwork, either changing the scale, blowing it up, or using imagery that they’ve had in paintings that we feel could translate well in fabrics or wallpaper,” Benson says of their design process.
Since partnering with Schumacher in 2019, Peg Norriss has been making waves in the design world. One fun cameo: Gendel’s Toile De Femmes, a lyrical hand-drawn print that depicts women playing guitars and riding horses, was used in the Sex and the City sequel, And Just Like That. The wallpaper appears in Charlotte’s daughters’ room. “I was watching it and texted everybody and screamed,” Benson says. “I had to keep stopping it and turning back and stopping and turning back. I’m like, guys, I think that Toile De Femmes is in Sex in the City!”
Another design from Peg Norriss in collaboration with artist Jackie Gendel, The Golden Age Panel Set features an overscale pattern that’s at once playful and sublime.
“Our main mission is to support the artists and to protect their interests. Everything else is easy and open for creativity.” — Barrie Benson
Benson and Johnson are working on an upcoming collection with a yet-to-be-announced fourth artist. It promises to be unique and fabulous and, most importantly, to remain true to their vision to champion female artists. “It’s so fun to have a totally different pattern; it’s not like we have a theme,” Benson says. “We’re not trying to make anything look the same. It can be their own entity. Our main mission is to support the artists and to protect their interests. And then everything else is easy and open for creativity.”
