Fleur wallpaper in Twilight takes its pattern from a magnificent early nineteenth-century Arts & Crafts crewelwork embroidery held in the Sidney Paul & Co archive. A delicate, flowing trail of stylised flowers and leaves winds across a softly textured ground, each elegant scroll rendered with the fine, raised detail of hand embroidery. In Twilight, the trail is a warm, blue with jewel tones, giving the wildflowers and berries an atmospheric quality, quite unlike the archive original. Fleur brings a graceful sense of nature indoors, its wildflowers and berries lending any room a settled, softly storied character.
Crewelwork embroidery was one of the great decorative crafts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wool threads were worked freehand onto linen to build up scrolling stems, leaves and flowers in raised relief. Because this was slow, skilled work, it was often passed down through a household rather than taught formally, and the pieces were treasured as much for the hours they represented as for their beauty. Our design team returned to this particular archive piece for its unusually free, natural drawing. In addition, they worked with UK printers to translate the texture of the original stitching into print, right down to the slight quirks that give hand embroidery its character. The palette in Twilight of warm blue tones with jewel accents, giving the design an atmospheric quality that’s quite different from the archive’s original colouring.
Please request a sample for a true colour match. If you’d like any help choosing the right colourway, we’d be delighted to assist.
