Alpana dates from 1971 and wears its decade openly. The drawing is etched and angular, built from stepped forms of the kind that seventies designers borrowed from Mesoamerican ornament, and it is printed in metallic so the pattern sits on the ground as inlay rather than as ink. There is a hardness to it that most archive papers do not have, and it is the better for it.
The repeat is unusual and deliberately so: at 76 cm the interlocking forms do not resolve where the eye expects them to, which keeps a strongly geometric design from settling into a grid. The result is a wall that keeps moving slightly, and that reads as glamour rather than as pattern, the metallic surface changing as light crosses it, the geometry never quite closing.
Given its finish, it belongs where light can be controlled: a dining room, a bar, a study, a bedroom lit by lamps. It is a straight match on a 0.53 m roll, so drops line up cleanly, and it pairs well with dark timber, lacquer and brass, surfaces that answer the metallic rather than compete with it. In a room without much daylight it becomes considerably more interesting after dark.
