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Screen Gems

Lampshades breathe new energy into a three-generation design and silk-screening venture.

When two silk-screeners created rice paper lanterns for their children’s wedding, little did they realize they were setting the groundwork for a new venture in lampshades: Tilit Lightsource.
          Kathleen Tillett and partner Betsy Geller, friends long before Kathleen’s son and Betsy’s daughter formed their own romantic partnership, made the lanterns using a pattern from the archives of Tillett’s husband’s design and silk-screen company. “We had created several lanterns for the wedding by silk-screening our Fern pattern onto rice paper. The lanterns looked so good, we thought that lighting might be the way to expand the business,” Tillett explains.
          Kathleen and her husband Dek operate a 7,000-sq.-ft. screen-printing factory (Dek Tillett Ltd.) in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, producing new and archival designs from the Tillett family’s vast library of kicky, breezy patterns. Dek’s parents began the design and fabric business in the 1940s, creating bold, vibrant prints for the elite decorator community.
          “Although we were familiar with the high-end home furnishings industry, we did not know that much about lighting and specifically lampshades,” Kathleen notes. “We traveled to the lighting market in Dallas to get a feel for the industry and to discuss with shade manufacturers how our fabrics would translate onto shades. We even visited several high-end shade factories. It took us about 18 months to create the line and sign agreements with factories to manufacture the shades using our fabrics.”
          The partners selected the patterns from a repertoire of more than 2,000 designs into several collections to cover a variety of trends. “Our reasoning behind these collections was to bring great patterns and designs to a market we felt needed to have more fun,” Kathleen says.
          Already piquing the interest of the design community, Tilit Lightsource offers eight shapes of shades including coolies, bells, squares, triangles, cylinders, and drums. The Natural collection features soft tan prints on an ivory background; the Designer collection offers metallic inks screened on Novasuede® and a Tillett family- designed toile and a Willow pattern on silk. The Novelty collection of hardbacks employs metallics and matte inks in the company’s Marine Mania, Daisy Dance, Seven Seas, Veggie Vendor, Willow Wisp, Kuba Kiss, Zulu Zone, and Ultra Urban patterns. The Crème Kraft line of patterns is based on nature motifs with a nod to Country and Lodge interiors.
          A unique white-on-white and a black-on-black group has caught the attention of interior designers. “Customers can order these white or black groups with either a patent leather or a matte ground. We just reverse the silk-screened pattern. For instance, on the shiny patent leather, we print a matte pattern. If they choose a matte ground, we will print a shiny design,” Kathleen explains. Tilit Lightsource has complete control over the production of these patterns, and silk-screens the fabrics and papers, which are then shipped to shade manufacturers who complete the work.
          Tilit Lightsource has updated several of the classic prints from the Tillett archives for the new shade company. “Our Toile has been in the collection for 45 years and was originally designed by Dek’s mother, Doris,” Kathleen comments. To update the print, gold metallic ink was used with the red and black grounds. A similar approach has created a smart, new look for the Willow pattern as well. Other classic designs appearing in the Tilit Lightsource collection include Fern, Garden, and Seven Seas. “Fern was one of Doris’ designs, and Seven Seas was the last design Dek’s father, Leslie, created before he died in 1992,” Kathleen says.
          When Betsey and Kathleen began to use papers in addition to fabric for the shades, they encountered still more variations. “Our Shell pattern has been in the collection for two generations. We print it in 100 colorways for our fabrics. When we printed the pattern on rice paper, we had to adjust our ink formulations [to achieve a match to the non-illuminated fabric],” Kathleen adds. “We also discovered that we had to slightly reformulate some inks so that the looks would work in a different medium like a lampshade,” she notes.
          In addition to its production shades, the company is also catering to a high-end designer clientele with exclusive patterns and colors and also creates custom colors and fabrics for the contract market. “We have just placed several of our lampshades in the Mill Reef Club, a small hotel in Key Largo,” Kathleen comments. “The designers have been using our fabrics throughout the hotel and then specified the lampshades to match. Because our library of designs is so vast and our capabilities nearly endless, we can easily enter the contract and private label categories,” she adds. Tillett also reports that the studio can match many colors. “All the client has to do is give us a sample from either the Benjamin Moore or Pantone books and we’ll do the rest.” The company can hand-paint the fabric lampshades to further customize the look.
          The home furnishings legacy continues in the family. The newlyweds who inspired the lighting line, Paul and Renee, run a high-end furniture import business based in Massachusetts living six months in Asia and six months in the United States. Lighting, it turns out, is not such a stretch for Kathleen after all. Her other son, Patrick McBride, is a New York City-based lighting designer who specifies lighting for office, hotel, and high-end residential projects.