Feather Fan is built from one small figure, a fan of fine radiating lines, set on a tight regular grid. The reference is Asian, but the handling is closer to art deco: a geometric unit repeated until it becomes a field, with no attempt at naturalism and no incident anywhere in it.
The lines are drawn as small dots and dashes rather than as continuous strokes, so at close range the surface has a pointillist quality and a definite hand to it. Several colourways introduce a metallic, which is where the design earns its depth, the fans catching obliquely as you move past while the ground stays flat behind them. The repeat is very short at 10.6 cm and the match is straight, which makes it economical to hang and forgiving on cuts around windows, doors and awkward returns.
It functions as a texture more than as a pattern, which makes it one of the more useful papers in the range. Use it on all four walls of a small room, in a hall, behind bookshelves, or as the quiet element in a scheme that already has a large print in the curtains. It also takes gilt frames particularly well.
