Roses have been planted at Hampton Court for more than five hundred years, and the flower carried particular weight for the Tudors, whose dynastic emblem it became. The palace's rose garden now holds English, tea, rambling and wild varieties, and Hampton Roses is drawn from them: a repeating floral of full-blown heads and buds on leafy stems.
The drawing is close and botanical without being stiff. Each head is built from many overlapping petals opened to different degrees, so some flowers are fully out and others still furled, and the foliage is drawn with the compound leaf and the thorn the plant actually has. The repeat is 64 cm on a 0.52 m roll and the match is straight, which keeps the stems aligned across the seams so the pattern climbs cleanly rather than shearing at every join. Nothing about the drawing is diagrammatic, which is what separates it from a botanical plate.
A rose paper is a traditional thing to hang and it is best not to fight that. Bedrooms, dressing rooms, a small sitting room, a guest room, places where a decorative flower is welcome. Painted furniture, plain matting and unpatterned linen keep it from tipping into pastiche, and there is enough real drawing in it to stand that treatment.
