Female Founders

Perhaps the only upside to workplace inequality is it has driven a lot of amazing women out of corporate America—and straight to the helm of their own companies. We decided we didn’t want to just cheer them on anymore. We wanted to meet them and interview them and write about them. With that, we give you: Female Founders, a column featuring women who create, design, and inspire.

Dreamed up by two best friends, June Summerill and Bernadette Bishop, who met through their kids, London-based Summerill & Bishop has exploded since it started. What was once a groundbreaking kitchenware shop has become a worldwide purveyor of famously exquisite hand-painted tablecloths, with napkins, aprons, and place mats to match; there’s also glassware, serving trays—you name it. The linens are all made with an elegant, easy-to-care-for vintage wash and all add a pretty burst of color to any table. “Both of us felt that kitchen was the heart of the home, so we wanted it to look effortlessly beautiful—just like the rest of the house,” says cofounder Summerill.

After first opening their doors in 1994, the pair took the brand from one bright, gorgeously curated storefront in Notting Hill to two (the second is in Belgravia) and launched a beautiful e-commerce site with features like Meanderings, a section with stories about the artisans the company works with.

When Bernadette Bishop passed away suddenly in 2014, Summerill and Bishop’s families were faced with the difficult decision of what to do with a business the two had so lovingly built from scratch. Bishop’s son Seb stepped in as CEO to work with Summerill to honor his mother’s love of gathering friends and family around a table, a sentiment that remains at the core of S&B’s mission today. A lightbulb moment came when Seb’s brother Oli came across an old cookbook inscribed by Bernadette to her mother. “Whenever my mum wrote a letter or signed a card, she used a flower as her signature,” says Seb. Inspired, the company teamed up with a centuries-old Italian stamperia to create a floral motif to use on everything from linen placemats to tea towels. “It felt like the most natural thing to have a range of tablecloths and napkins featuring that flower, in her honor,” he says.

This month, Summerill & Bishop is helping celebrate goop’s tenth anniversary with the release of a just-for-us linen tablecloth and cocktail napkins, fittingly timed with the arrival of our pop-up shop in Notting Hill.