Washington, D.C.–based artist and designer Hadiya Williams is a dynamo of creative energy, channeling her singular vision into an ever-widening range of media that spans ceramics, cut-paper collage, digital generation, and more. Williams’s designs are both spare and bold, supremely edited yet wildly expressive. Her work sits at the intersection of graphic design, product design, and fine art, and while she fluidly moves between processes (and often also weaves them together), her visual language is always rooted in narrative and heritage.
Multimedia artist, designer, and Schumacher collaborator Hadiya Williams.
Kirth BobbWhen embarking on a new project, Williams immerses herself in inspiration. “I get deeply into a state of flow and pull from everything I’ve been absorbing—books, textiles, vintage objects, museums, you name it—and bring that into my work,” she says. “It’s a beautiful mix.” This combination of factors has made Wiliams an in-demand collaborator across a wide range of platforms. Case in point: Last year, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum tapped her as one of 25 participating artists selected for its Design Triennial exhibition “Making Home,” now on view through August 10, 2025.
The driving force behind Williams’s newest collection for Schumacher builds on the themes of her much-loved first collection, which delved into the topics of ancestry and migration in exciting new ways. “This collection adds even more layers,” Williams comments. “There’s more storytelling, more nostalgia, and more of the objects that hold our history and memories.”
All the new patterns are hand-printed, a key component of Williams’s process. “Hand-building, hand-printing, the handmade—that’s the foundation of my work,” she says. “I start my designs by hand, bring them to the computer, then bring them back to hand-making again. That back-and-forth is at the core of everything I do. Keeping the connection to that human touch brings in nuance, intuition, and a little bit of magic, and I wanted that to come through in this collection.”
Williams is celebrated for incorporating themes of ancestry, heritage, and narrative into her graphic patterns.
KEVIN KERR
A telling example is the wavy, evocative stripe Drift (available as both a fabric and a wallpaper in a fetching set of colorways), which calls to mind “water and movement,” Williams says. “I drew the original design by hand with marker.” The designer created the irresistible Ode, block-printed on an unbleached linen ground and based on a series of ceramic boombox neckpieces, in honor of hip-hop’s 50th anniversary. “Growing up, boomboxes were a big part of my childhood and culture. This pattern came straight from one of my sketches, and it was fun to see that translation. I’ve never considered myself an illustrator, but going forward I definitely plan to include more of my sketches in my finished work.”
Raze Sisal wallcovering evolved from Williams’s experiments with hand-cut paper forms. “I arranged the pieces in all kinds of different ways until landing on this one,” she says. “It feels like a floral, but the motifs also look like combs. Hand-screening the pattern onto sisal takes it to a new level and really brings out the artistry and richness of it.” The hand-blocked Parable is an entrancing, rhythmic pattern printed on a union ground. “I love this whole collection, but if I had to pick a favorite, it would be Parable,” she says. “What really gets me is that the negative space is the first thing you notice, and it pulls you in before you’ve even registered the design itself. It gives the pattern a layered feeling, almost as if it’s a story unfolding.” Two new colorways have also been added to Trace, a loose, organic, and enduringly popular large-scale wallpaper from Williams’s first Schumacher collection. Sand is the perfect go-anywhere neutral and Ice a fresh, clean take on blue.
Based on an original acrylic painting, Hadiya Williams’s Trace has a mural-like effect that can turn a wall into a work of art. Here, it elevates a meeting room at Schumacher’s Manhattan HQ.
Max Kim-Bee
“Hand-building, hand-printing, the handmade—that’s the foundation of my work.”
Williams’s thoughts about how designers might use the patterns in her collection reflect her trademark nimbleness and dexterity. “It would be great to see them in unexpected applications,” she says, “such as one of the bold wallpapers in a small powder room or a mix of prints on upholstered chairs, or even turning some of the fabrics into panels of wall art. My ultimate goal, though, is to see them in public spaces such as restaurants and boutique hotels where people can experience them in many different ways.”
