A damask is normally a formal thing, symmetrical, mirrored about a vertical axis, with a compass somewhere in its ancestry. Afrika Damask is not. Its motifs were painted by hand from a single Ardmore ceramic piece, and they keep the slight asymmetry of something made rather than drafted, so the ogee structure is there but the drawing inside it wanders.
That gives it a role most patterned papers cannot fill. It has enough incident to be interesting at close range and enough regularity to behave as a semi-plain from across a room, which makes it the paper to use when a scheme already contains a strong design and needs a second wall that will support it without arguing. Within the Baobab collection it was made to do exactly that.
The repeat is a full metre, and the roll is 0.7 m wide and 8 m long rather than the more usual 10, so quantities need working out properly before ordering. It is a straight match, which keeps the vertical rhythm clean. In a bedroom, a dressing room or a first-floor sitting room it gives the walls a worked surface and leaves the pattern to the fabrics. Within the Baobab collection it is the design that lets the others speak.
