Cole & Son | Archipelago Border

Archipelago Border is a frieze rather than a paper, drawn as a shoreline seen from just above the waterline: crabs and lobsters moving between shells, coral branching up through the composition, and the plants of a shallow reef filling the spaces between. The register is naturalist rather than nautical, closer to a cabinet of specimens than to anything conventionally decorative about the sea.

Its scale is what makes it worth using. At 0.69 m deep this is not a trim but a band with real presence, and the 150 cm repeat means the scene develops properly along a wall instead of restating itself every few feet. Run above a dado or below a cornice it reads as a painted frieze; run at picture-rail height in a low room it takes some of the ceiling's weight away.

It suits a bathroom, a garden room or a hall with plain walls that need one line of incident, and it works particularly well over painted panelling. Rolls are 7.5 m long, so measure the full run of the wall before ordering; a border consumes length quickly and joins are more visible in a horizontal band than in a vertical drop. Above painted panelling it gives a plain room its one piece of ornament.