Katy McIntyre Brown
Botanical artist, textile designer and teacher
Katy has been painting the natural world around her for over twenty years, starting to paint professionally in Nairobi, Kenya when her children were growing up.
Having moved back to Hampshire in 2014, Katy now paints her botanical furnishing fabric designs from her studio in the Test Valley, as well as working as an arts with Horatio’s Garden, spinal injury charity in Salisbury District Hospital. Katy’s interest in the therapeutic impact that nature can have on us mentally and physically started early and she always wanted to find a way of bringing nature into urban or institutional environments. With a Masters Degree in Textile Design from Winchester College of Art, she can now combine her love of plants with her love of fabrics to bring nature into homes across the country.
Her previous life as a psychologist in crisis communication enriches her knowledge of mental health, art, nature and how the natural world benefits our wellbeing. Her unique and beautiful botanical projects are always designed to be gorgeous, calming feasts for the eye and heart, and are all painted with organic and ethically produced paints. Having researched textile manufacturing for years now, Katy has identified expert ethical furnishing fabric printers across the UK using the most up to date and sustainable printing processes. Her textiles are printed on the best quality natural fabrics, to order, to ensure that our carbon footprint is as small as it can possibly be.
Katy can either be found working from her home studio in Hampshire, or creating her bespoke designs on location. Katy recently painted in the winning Best in Show garden at RHS Chelsea as an Artist in Residence for Horatio’s Garden.
Her work has been featured in Hampshire Life, Solent TV and Gardener’s World and her fabrics have found homes as far afield as New Zealand, New York and Africa.
Our ethics and approach to business
High quality responsible fabrics for your home
Ethical Production
We always considers the environmental impact of our materials and the energy used to create our products. We put responsible production at the heart of our business.
Sustainable materials and slow fashion
We don’t print our designs onto manmade fabrics, instead choosing to use natural, organic and responsibly produced textiles. We choose natural fabrics for environmental reasons, and also for their texture, feel and because they’re hardwearing. Their longevity hopefully means you will want them in your home for a long time to come, our designs are created to be classics you continue to love and to last.
Environmental dyes and reusing fabrics
In addition, the print colours we use in the production of our furnishing fabrics are stable and made of natural dyes so they don’t change colour or fade in the sunlight. All our fabrics are printed in England, using organic and sustainable materials to order or in very short runs, to avoid overproduction and reduce our carbon footprint. Any fabrics we have left after production of tablecloths or tea towels are either made into handbags and holdalls or fabrics samples.
Supporting non-profit organisations
Katy Botanicals is proud to support both Horatio’s Garden and Safe Lives charity with bespoke fabric designs.
Horatio’s Garden is an incredible charity that nurtures the wellbeing of people after spinal injury in beautiful, vibrant sanctuaries within the heart of NHS spinal injury centres.
Safe Lives is a charity that works at policy level and throughout communities to end domestic abuse. Safe Lives work with policy makers, government bodies, schools and outreach organisations to help victims become safer sooner.
To learn more about both charities please click on the links above.
Moving forward
We are always researching ways to improve our environmental impact and maintain our high standards, from painting through production to postage.
We hope you love our products as much as we do.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are your most popular botanical fabric designs?
Our fern designs are very popular because they are a soft design and complement most colour schemes. We produce the fern design in a selection of scales and with different backgrounds to suit any interior style.
Are your designs custom made?
Katy comes up with each design herself, and creates it over a couple of months. It is then printed and tested for suitability as a furnishing fabric (for example to check that the design sits happily in the middle of a wing back chair or set of curtains), then we add it to our website as a new piece in our collection.
Can I order samples?
We’d be delighted to send you some samples of any fabrics or wallpapers that you’re interested in. Email us at: katy@katymintyrebrown.com and we can send some out to you
What are the benefits of using organic and environmental furnishing fabrics?
There are huge benefits to using environmental, natural, sustainable and organic fabrics. All the fabrics we use are derived from plants, so have a lovely feel, take dyes well and are strong. The dyes we use are natural so have a strong resistance to being bleached or changing colour in the sun. The cotton velvets we use are incredibly soft, luxurious and indulgent, and wonderful to sit on or hold in your hands when you open and shut your curtains.
And using sustainable fabrics is good for the earth and therefore for us.
How are your fabrics printed?
Our fabrics are printed to order, to avoid holding extra stock or creating waste. The cottons and linens are printed and sent to you within ten working days. The cotton velvet take a little longer and are usually sent to you within four weeks.
Can you match any of your designs to my colour scheme or interior design plan?
We can create bespoke wallpaper or fabric designs especially for you by matching a ground, or background colour for a chosen design with your colour scheme.
How do you create custom-made prints like this?
To create custom made prints we ask you for the paint colours you are using, then colour-match them with a Pantone* colour code, and create a background using this colour. We then send you a sample to check that it works for you, and go from there.
How long will I have to wait for my furnishing fabric order to arrive, what is the printing lead time?
Our linens and cottons are usually printed, packaged and sent out to you within 10 working days. Our cotton velvets are printed by a traditional printings in the Midlands who take slightly longer to print and finish the velvet, currently our turn around time for cotton furnishing velvet is 4-5 weeks.
How will I receive my order?
We send our UK orders to you via signed for, registered post through the Royal Mail. Overseas orders will be sent to you via UPS or DHL depending on which is best for your region.
Can I order your designer botanical fabrics from overseas?
We currently send our fabrics to clients in the UK, US, Canada and Europe. However, if a customer has a courier service they trust and is happy to arrange their own postage, then we are alway very happy to send our fabrics further afield.
Where can I buy your botanical furnishing fabrics?
We sell our furnishing fabrics exclusively through our websites or at our pop up shops. As our designer furnishing fabrics are organic, sustainable, and printed in the UK, they are high end and expensive to produce. We would like to make them available to you for as good a price as we can considering their quality, so only sell them directly, we do not sell through anyone else.
What is a your minimum order?
Our minimum order is one metre of fabric.
Do you offer trade discounts on your botanical furnishing fabrics?
Our botanical furnishing fabrics are printed by the metre and we are happy to offer trade discounts on any orders over ten metres.
Our trade discounts apply to the number of metres ordered, so if you order five metres of one design and five metres of another, the ten metre discount will be applied.
Do you offer custom designs?
It takes many months to create a Katy Botanicals design so we don’t offer custom designs, we can however work with you to match the colour of a design to your interiors colour scheme.
Do you offer bespoke botanical wallpapers?
If there is a design you particularly like, we can create a wallpaper for you. We can also match the background to your colour scheme and maybe the scale to make the design larger or smaller if this works better.
Do you run botanical painting workshops?
Katy regularly hosts botanical painting workshops. To find out more and to sign up, please visit our ‘workshops’ page on the website, or click here: botanical painting workshops
How can I contact you?
We can be contacted via email: katy@katymcintyrebrown.com, or instagram: katy_botanicals, or phone: +44 7713 979809.
