Bazaar is drawn from embossed metal tiles, the pressed and beaten panels that line walls and ceilings across the Near East and turn up in every bazaar from Marrakesh to Isfahan. What the design reproduces is not the pattern of those tiles so much as their behaviour: the way a raised surface takes light unevenly, brightening where it stands proud and darkening in the recesses.
The printing carries an aged effect across each tile, and crucially it varies from one to the next. No two panels wear in the same way, which is what a wall of genuine repousse metal looks like after a century of handling. That variation is the difference between a design that reads as metal and one that reads as a picture of metal.
The burnished palettes give the effect a warmth that flat metallics do not achieve. Used across a whole room it is remarkably enveloping, particularly in low light, and it belongs in the enclosed and slightly theatrical parts of a house: a dining room, a bar, a cloakroom, a study. Set against dark timber, worn leather and plain plaster it reads as patina rather than as shine, which is the distinction worth keeping.
