Cranley is a single-colour surface print, and understanding what that means explains the design. Surface printing lays one colour from a roller in a slightly raised film, which limits the drawing to line and mass with no tonal modelling available. Everything therefore has to be achieved through the shape of the plant, and in this case the plant is the tiger lily.
Lilium lancifolium suits the method. Its petals recurve, folding right back on themselves, and its stamens project well clear of the flower, so the silhouette alone carries all the information needed. Drawn in a continuous flowing arrangement of blooms and leaves, the design produces movement across the wall without any of the depth a multi-colour print would give it.
The repeat is 53 cm on a 0.53 m roll with a straight match, so one full width of pattern falls per drop and the flow reads uninterrupted across the room. Being tonal, it functions almost as a textured plain from a distance, which makes it far easier to live with than its scale suggests. Good in a bedroom, a landing, a small drawing room, or behind a run of framed pictures. It reads almost as a textured plain from the far side of a room.
