Geraniums are the flower of the Andalusian balcony, massed in pots along railings, in courtyards and through the public gardens of Seville, where the climate lets them run for most of the year. This design began in the Cole & Son archive and was redrawn and repainted from scratch by the studio, which accounts for its unusual freshness for an archive pattern.
The redrawing concentrated on two things: the leaves, which are broad, fanned and slightly ruffled at the edge, and the flower heads, which are built from many small petals gathered into a dense cluster. Both are painted rather than outlined, so the pattern has weight and body and no graphic hardness anywhere in it. At 52 cm on a 0.52 m roll the repeat is compact, and the half-drop match sets the clusters diagonally so they never march in rows.
It has the density of a real plant, and rooms that can take a full, generous floral will take it: a kitchen, a garden room, a bedroom, a small dining room. It also works well below a dado in a hall. Keep the woodwork plain and the fabrics unpatterned, and let the leaves supply the room's texture. In an Andalusian courtyard the plant is the decoration, and the same logic applies here.
