Feya Balabina danced with the Kirov, and the collection this design belongs to is named for the theatre that company came from. The paper itself has an older history: it began as a block print in the Cole & Son archive and has been redrawn for screen printing, a change that allows finer detail and a far larger repeat than blocks ever permitted.
The redrawing added a hoopoe, a bird with a fanned crest and barred wings, and one of the more decorative subjects in European ornithology. It sits within a damask structure of foliage and scroll, and its presence changes the register of the whole design, turning a formal repeating pattern into something with a subject in it. The eye goes to the bird first and finds the damask afterwards.
The repeat runs to just over a metre, which is large by any measure, and the half-drop match staggers it across widths so the birds distribute rather than line up. Both facts matter at the ordering stage: a repeat this long needs allowance on every drop. It belongs in a room with height, a first-floor drawing room, a stair hall, a dining room with a good ceiling. It is worth hanging above a dado, where the repeat has room to complete.
