Cole & Son | Couture Carousel Cushion Lavender

Couture Carousel began as a wallpaper: sixteen fashion figures, hand-drawn and hand-painted at Cole & Son's Chelsea flagship, tracing couture from the constructed glamour of the fifties to the experiment of the nineties. Reduced to a cushion in the Lavender palette, the design becomes portraiture, a few figures at close range where the quickness of the line and the exaggeration of the proportions can actually be seen.

The construction is worth noting. It is backed and piped in Colour Box Velvet, so the seam is defined and the reverse has the density that keeps a cushion sitting upright rather than folding over. The inner is feather and down: heavier than a synthetic filling, slower to recover, and the reason a good cushion looks better after it has been sat against than before.

At 50 cm square it is the size that does real work on a deep sofa or a bed, where smaller cushions get lost among the others. It is handmade in Great Britain. Use it against plain linen or velvet upholstery, where a single printed object in an otherwise quiet room carries a good deal more than a group of patterned ones would. It is a finished object rather than an accessory, which is a distinction worth paying for.