Florence dates from 1890 and belongs to the end of the period when British wallpaper was still drawn by hand for block printing. It is a small classical repeat, an ornamental figure set at regular intervals with a good deal of unprinted ground between, of the sort that would have been hung in an ordinary well-made house rather than a grand one. It has the evenness of a paper designed to be lived with rather than admired.
That modesty is the point. The motif is fine enough that from a few paces the wall reads as a tone with a faint grain in it, and only at close range does the ornament resolve into a drawn figure. Because it has no strong directional emphasis and no large element, it goes around corners and into recesses without any awkwardness, and it takes furniture, mirrors and hung pictures without competing with them.
Papers like this are the ones that make a scheme rather than announce it. Use it through a hall and up a staircase, in a study, in a guest bedroom, or as the ground for a room where the real interest is in the fabrics. It sits particularly comfortably with painted joinery and old timber.
