Bellini takes its name from the Sicilian composer and its drawing from a Cole & Son surface print of the 1950s. That decade's tile patterns were loose and quick, painted rather than draughted, and the reworking has kept that quality: each tile holds a small sketched incident, a flower, a scroll, a geometric fragment, and no two are laboured.
The tiles are laid out in a regular grid but the contents vary, which is what stops the design reading as a repeat. From across a room it behaves as an even textured field with the faint chalkiness of watercolour; close to, the individual squares resolve and the improvisation becomes apparent. It is a good deal more interesting than a plain paper and considerably calmer than a pattern.
The repeat is 70 cm on a 0.52 m roll and the match is straight, so the grid lines up cleanly across widths, worth having in a tile design where a misaligned join is immediately obvious. It suits kitchens, bathrooms, back stairs and small bedrooms, and it will hang happily behind a dresser or a run of pictures without competing for attention. It is one of the easiest patterned papers to live with over years.
