Carousel Stripe was originally made with a stripe pan, a printing trough divided into compartments, each filled by hand with a different colour and drawn across the paper in a single pass. It is a slow and slightly unpredictable way to make a stripe, and it produces bands with soft edges and a dragged, brushed texture that no ruled printing can imitate.
The modern version keeps that character. The ribbons are metallic and the drag is preserved along their length, so the stripe has grain running vertically through it and the metal catches light unevenly, brightening where the brush loaded and fading where it lifted. The result has considerable glamour, but it is the glamour of a hand-made surface rather than of a shiny one.
It hangs on a random match, which means no aligning between drops, forgiving on walls that are not true and economical around returns and reveals where offcuts can be used up. On a 0.52 m roll it suits any room. It works especially well in a dining room, a dressing room or a hall lit by lamps, where the metallics have something to do after dark. It is one of the more forgiving papers to hang in an old house.
