Flavor Paper Wallpaper

Jon Sherman is a creative and eclectic individual, whose career path to becoming a successful creative force in the wallpaper business took quite a few unexpected twists and turns.

Growing up in small town Ohio with a passion for design

Jon Sherman, iconic founder and creative director of Flavor Paper, grew up in a small town in Ohio. From a very young age he developed a keen interest in art and design, successfully participating in several local competitions. This passion led John to choose the Colorado College and Tulane University, where he graduated with a degree in Art and Architecture.

Moving to New York to work in the entertainment industry

Having completed his degree, Jon took the logical step to develop his talents further and moved to New York in the mid-1990s to pursue a career in design. Having initially started as a set designer for music videos and television commercials, he then transitioned to designing sets for some of the most popular Broadway shows of the time.

A career move to the real estate industry

Deciding it was time to change the direction of his career, Jon entered the real estate industry, using his design skills to renovate buildings. Initially focusing on redesigning condo interiors in Florida to increase the sale price, his business ventures led him to seeking possible new deals state-wide. It’s through these channels that one day he learned that an Oregon-based wallpaper company with unique designs had gone out of business.

From a random bit of information about a company that had gone belly-up and was up for grabs to a move to futuristic headquarters in Brooklyn, the story of Flavor Paper is certainly full of fascinating twists.

A fire in an Oregon company triggers a crazy idea

In 2003, while working in private equity and real estate development, Jon Sherman heard through a friend that a wallpaper company had burned down to the ground in Oregon. The owner of the company, a guy called Ted, had decided to get rid of his wallpaper equipment, which dated back to the '70s. His curiosity piqued, Jon contacted Ted and asked if he could take the machines. He was given 24 hours to get them out of there.

The New Orleans roots

In less than two days, Sherman managed to move over 300 silkscreen machines from the Pacific Northwest to the Bywater District in New Orleans, where he was living at the time. With little experience in wallpaper production and no idea how to print on a flat surface, Jon borrowed $100.000 to get the business started, employed four workers and taught himself how to create wall décor from scratch. Flavor Paper was born.

A move to Brooklyn triggers a major expansion

Since the vast majority of Flavor Paper’s clients were located in New York City, in 2009 Jon decided it was time to move the company from Bywater to the Boerum Hill neighbourhood of Brooklyn. This allowed him to be more connected with the creative hub of the Big Apple and to expand his headquarters so that he could keep production under one roof.

The celebrated “Flavor Lair” headquarters

Known as the “Flavor Lair,” Flavor Paper’s current headquarters are housed in a four-floor building located at 216 Pacific Street, in downtown Brooklyn. Designed by Jeff Kovel of Skylab Architecture, it incorporated an award-winning showroom and an in-house production facility, which includes a darkroom, screen-etching equipment, and an ink room as well as Jon Sherman’s own home at the top. Of course, each single wall of the building is bedecked with Flavor wallpaper.

In its relatively short life so far, Flavor Paper’s philosophy of always being innovative led to a new take on traditional printing techniques and their offer of customisable and bespoke wall décor has truly revolutionised the wallpaper industry.

A design-centric company

Upon moving to Brooklyn, Jon Sherman declared Flavor Paper to be a “design-centric wallpaper company that will change your world” and he’s been true to his word. Flavor Paper is not interested in producing industrial-scale amounts of wallpaper, preferring instead to focus on small batches of truly edgy and imaginative designs produced in collaboration with some of the most influential artists of our time.

Innovation knows no limits

Right from the start, the aim of Flavor Paper was to redefine what a wallpaper company should be. Rejecting a status quo where all competitors were very traditional, Flavor Paper started experimenting with brand new ideas like the “scratch-and-sniff” collection, holographic surfaces, or traditional silk screening reinvented for the 21st century.

Keeping all aspects of production in-house

Reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Factory in Manhattan, Flavor Paper headquarters in Cobble Hill host the entire production line, with the printing studio at the ground floor, so that passers-by can watch the wallpaper being made. The entire floor is open plan and divided up by task, with an ink room, a dark room and a printing area. This allows Jon to keep quality and innovation under strict supervision.

Custom-made wallpapers for each client

Each Flavor Paper wall décor design can be customised, with various paper types, weights, and styles available to each client. The decision to allow customers to pick their ink colours, materials, and patterns, thus creating bespoke hand-printed models at no additional cost, was an innovation that took wallpaper from being a background material into the foreground as a work of art.

Always at the forefront of innovation, Flavor Paper combines the latest advancements in technology with traditional production methods to achieve truly unique results.

Screen printing

Flavor Paper is widely known for having mastered the unique technique of large-format silk screening by hand to create wallpapers with bold, vibrant colours and intricate designs. Screen printing involves using a stencil to apply ink to the paper, one colour at a time. They combine the traditional hand-made aspect of the craft, with modern technology to achieve the cleanest and most precise print possible.

Digital Printing

Always eager to use technological progress to further the range of possibilities in wallpaper production, Flavor Paper uses wide-format digital printing to create incredible digital wallpapers based on high-quality photographic images that allow for unlimited colour options and a range of designs that would otherwise be impossible to achieve.

Hand-painting

Taking the approach of creating custom-made models to the extreme, some of Flavor Paper's wallpapers are hand-painted by selected artists that bring the design onto paper by hand. This produces unique, one-of-a-kind wallpapers. Other models, for instance “Enfumé”, are reproductions of hand-painted artwork.

One of the signature characteristics of Flavor Paper lies in their collaborations with some of the most experimental and celebrated artists. These include the father of Pop Art, Andy Warhol, the singer of the Beastie Boys, Mike Diamond, and multimedia artist Liz Collins.

Warhol foundation

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was so impressed with the innovative quality of Flavor Paper that it granted them a unique deal, giving them access to a large number of artworks by the celebrated father of Pop Art. Flavor Paper used several of his iconic works of art, including silkscreen prints and film stills, as inspiration for a collection of wallpapers bearing his name.

Beastie Boys

One of Flavor Paper’s most unusual collaborations was with Mike Diamond from iconic band Beastie Boys. Mike wanted a Brooklyn-inspired wallpaper to decorate the walls of his Brooklyn mansion, paying tribute to all things Brooklyn in a French toile style. The resulting digital creation, called “Brooklyn Toile” captures many aspects of New York life, from Coney Island to Hasidic Jews to The Notorious B.I.G.

Liz Collins

Brooklyn-based multi-media artist Liz Collins is widely known for using fabric, knitwear, and textiles as basis for all her artwork, moulding and transforming them into multi-dimensional shapes. She has collaborated with Flavor Paper to create some truly iconic wallpapers, e.g. “Can Can”, a hypnotic design based on one of her suspended sculptures.

Lenny Kravitz

Another marriage between music and wallpaper took place when rock star icon Lenny Kravitz collaborated through his own design firm Kravitz Design with Flavor Paper to create a collection of wallpaper models inspired by Lenny’s love of Brazilian culture. With strong patterns, electric colours and powerful designs, “The Tropicalismo Collection” is an ode to the Brazilian Tropicalia movement of the late 1960s.

Jon Sherman has always been an outspoken supporter of the transformation of wallpaper production standards to more ecological and sustainable methods, utilising non-polluting inks and renewable materials.

Water-based inks

Aware of the pollution caused by plastisol inks traditionally used in screen printing techniques, Flavor Paper decided early on to phase them out and use water-based inks instead. Despite being more difficult to use, these water-based inks are substantially more eco-friendly as they are non-toxic, biodegradable, and soy-based.

PVC-free and FSC-sourced materials

Unlike many other wallpapers on the market, all Flavor Paper models are PVC-free. No polyester is used, with the result that they are also plasticiser-free and phthalate-free. Furthermore, the pulp required to produce the non-woven layer is sourced from FSC-certified sustainable forestry.