In September 1651 Charles II spent a day in an oak tree in Boscobel Wood while Parliamentary soldiers searched the ground beneath him. The tree became the Royal Oak, and it joined the Tudor rose and the lion in the small vocabulary of symbols that English monarchy has used ever since. Boscobel Oak gathers all three into a damask.
Using a damask structure for heraldic material is a shrewd move. The ogee framework absorbs the symbols into a repeating ornament, so the design carries its history without becoming a coat of arms; you read a handsome pattern first and the rose, the lion and the oak leaves afterwards. The drawing is dense and the ground largely filled, in the manner of seventeenth-century woven silks rather than of printed paper.
The palettes are built on gilded metals, and specifically on metals that have oxidised: the finishes are dulled and unevenly aged rather than bright, which is what keeps the design from looking gilded in the wrong way. It suits a room with some architecture to it, a hall, a library, a dining room or a stair, and it sits well against dark timber, worn leather and old brass. It is a design with a story in it, which is not something most damasks offer.
