Meet Elizabeth: the York designer giving Victorian animals a second life

Hedgehogs in the bracken, owls in parliament, a dragon curled around the light. Meet Elizabeth, the York designer giving Victorian animal etchings a witty second life on lampshades and prints.

Some homes are full of things that match. The best ones are full of things that start a conversation. Mountain & Molehill makes the second kind: monochrome lampshades and prints filled with Victorian creatures who all look as though they are up to something. A riot of robins. A team of ducks. A cat very firmly amongst the pigeons.

Behind every one of them is Elizabeth, who designs from her home in York while bringing up two ever-growing children, and whose raw material comes from a wonderfully unlikely place: the old encyclopaedias she collects.

Meet Elizabeth

Mountain & Molehill is Elizabeth’s own. She sources the artwork, designs every piece and builds the business around family life in York, a juggle plenty of ALM readers will recognise. It shows in the work. These are pieces made by someone who knows what a child’s bedroom needs and what a grown-up sitting room needs, and has found a way to give both at once.

There is a lightness to the whole thing, too. The name alone tells you this is a brand that refuses to take itself too seriously, while taking the craft very seriously indeed.

A second life for Victorian etchings

Every design starts with an illustration plate. Elizabeth hunts out Victorian and Edwardian animal etchings, many of them from the antique encyclopaedias on her shelves, then edits and collages them into new, contemporary scenes. Where most of us would see a scientific drawing of a badger, she sees a character with somewhere to be.

That playful, anthropomorphic eye is where the humour comes from, and the titles give the game away. The bears are labelled Better Go in Disguise. The deer are on a Stag Night. A row of owls sits under the heading Parliament is in Session. It is clever without being smug, and it rewards a second look.

Far more than a lampshade

Lampshades are Mountain & Molehill’s most popular range, and each one begins life as a standalone print. Elizabeth then reworks the design so it reads properly in the round, which means the scene wraps around the shade rather than simply being printed on it. Light it up and the whole menagerie comes alive.

Every design is finished with either a gold detail or a carefully chosen splash of colour to lift the black and white: a red lobster, a blue tit, a flash of kingfisher. Shades come with a choice of white or gold inner, and each one is made to order.

The menagerie

A small taste of the collection, chosen with long autumn evenings in mind.

A talking point in every room

Elizabeth describes her pieces as “talking points in a room”, and that is exactly how they behave. They are playful enough for a nursery or a child’s bedroom, yet sharp and funny enough to hold their own in a living room or a hallway. Because the palette is monochrome, they sit as happily in a Victorian terrace as in a new-build flat.

That breadth makes them brilliant presents. Alongside the lampshades there are large and small prints, initial prints and word prints, plus a dedicated wedding gifts collection. For something truly personal, Elizabeth also takes bespoke commissions, from a semi-bespoke tweak of an existing design to a piece made entirely from scratch.

Which creature would you give house room to? Tell us on Instagram and tag us #annelouisemag.