About Melina

Hi and thanks for visiting my website. I'm Melina Copass, owner, designer, and manufacturer of Melinamade. Melinamade brings back vintage designs by reproducing and re-creating 1950s through 1970s inspired motifs on new Barkcloth cotton fabrics, wallpapers, glassware, and other accessories. Melinamade takes pride in the fact that all designs are specially screen-printed by hand at one of the last standing printing factory's of it's scale here in San Francisco, CA, USA.

The hand silk screening process embraces an older, traditional way of making fabrics and wallpaper. Hand Screened flatbed textile printing is as much an art and craft as a science. The artwork is initially created by hand or on a computer and then transferred on to acetate film positives. Silk screens are burned from the positives using a photographic emulsion process. Two people walk up and down the flatbed tables printing each color frame by frame, with a large squeegee pushing the desired ink through the screen onto the fabric or wallpaper. We use water based pigments "Inks" and cure (to make washable) most of the colors with chemicals that are added to the ink before it is printed. There are three types of pigments in use: Transparent, Opaque, and Metallic. Melinamade mainly uses Transparent inks and some metallics. Transparents are "low solids" pigments; when the fabric is dry there is very little residue left in the fabric. They are very transparent, which means that a color printed on top of a colored ground will be affected by the color of the ground fabric or any other color printed with it. The absorption of the ground fabric, such as the thick nubby texture of my Barkcloth can greatly affect the look of the print and the color value/hue as well. This is used to my advantage to simulate the look, feel, and adherence quality of dyed prints. Metallic Inks used are actually a subset of the Opaques. Today's technology has given us metallics which are not metal at all and are often made up of plastics, mica, and natural oxides. This gives greater chemical stability, eliminates tarnishing problems, and makes it so the fabrics can be machine washed. These three types of pigments can be mixed in any proportions to achieve desired effects. Thus, truly becoming an art of delicate balance. To learn more about hand screen printing, check out, www.zoo-ink.com.

Barkcloth fabric is a 100%,12 ounce , 4-ply weave cotton (supposedly giving the appearance of Bark on a tree) that is ideal for upholstery, drapery, and other home furnishing applications. Fabrics are 56" wide, selvedge to selvedge and pattern repeats vary from 18" to 31". Fabrics are preshrunk, colorfast, and machine washable. The wallpaper is a fabric-like wallcovering paper (called "Liner Paper") made to coordinate with my fabrics or just stand alone. They are water resistant and crackproof. Wallpapers are 27" wide and repeats are every 24" straight. The paper is not pre-pasted and heavy-duty clear vinyl paste is recommended. The glassware is of highest commercial quality. Each design is fired on tempered glass individually making it durable and dishwasher safe.

My interest in vintage textiles and wallpaper began about ten years ago when I started collecting twentieth-century antiques. I initially tried locating vintage '50s fabric to recover a chair only to discover that good quality, period fabrics were becoming extinct. After a lot of research, I found a company which still weaves raw Barkcloth, the original home furnishing fabric of the '40s -60s. Before I knew it, my avocation became a vocation, and Melinamade was born. Melinamade has been in business for 9 years as a one-woman operation; and I now offer 17 Barkcloth designs, 10 wallpaper designs, and 6 glassware designs featuring abstract, atomic, and geometric motifs.

Please visit the market for current pricing or contact Melina directly for wholesale quotes. No minimums required. I have most of these designs in stock right now. If I don't have what you want in stock, it will only take about 3 weeks to get it to you. In addition, I would be happy to discuss your decorating requirements as well customizing various products on an individual basis.

Well, enough about me. Have fun exploring the website and let me know what you think of it.