Brunschwig & Fils | Botanique Print

Botanique is a printed linen, and it has the soft, slightly uneven hand that linen always has. The weave shows through the print, so the colours read as washed rather than flat, and the pattern looks as though it belongs to the cloth rather than sitting on it. The design is botanical and large in scale, so it works as a feature rather than a background. In a room it brings the garden in without being literal about it.

The composition is 100% linen and the cloth is 138.73 cm wide. The vertical repeat is 95.45 cm and the horizontal repeat is 138.73 cm, the full width of the cloth, so the pattern does not need matching across the width. It belongs to the Carlsten collection from Brunschwig & Fils and comes in four colourways: Berry, Blue, Spring and Multi. It is suitable for curtains and upholstery. No Martindale figure has been given, so we would specify it for curtains and for occasional seating rather than a heavily used sofa.

We would use Botanique for full-length curtains in a sitting room or bedroom, where the long repeat can fall in full and the linen gives the cloth a relaxed drape. It is also well suited to a pair of armchairs or a large window seat, where the scale of the design has space. For a pairing, we would keep the walls in a soft, plain colour and take one tone from the print, such as Blue, for a solid linen on a cushion or footstool so the pattern has something quiet to sit beside.

Plan the order around the 95.45 cm repeat and allow at least one extra repeat per drop so the pattern can be set at the same point on every panel. Linen can relax and shift in length, so ask the workroom to hang the curtains before hemming. We would line and interline them to protect the print from sunlight and to give the cloth some weight. On upholstery, have the upholsterer place the main motif deliberately, and test a swatch for shrinkage before cutting.