Hoopoe Leaves is built on a deception. What appear at first to be blossoms scattered through the canopy are the feathery crowns of hoopoes hiding in the leaves; look longer and there are beetles, and a wide-eyed praying mantis watching from a stem. The design gives up its inhabitants slowly, which is why it holds attention far beyond the first reading. Very little of it is visible at a glance, and almost all of it is visible by the end of a long dinner.
It comes from Ardmore, whose design language pairs close natural observation with a densely worked decorative surface. Every leaf, feather and wing case here is patterned individually, dotted, banded and outlined in a manner that draws directly on Zulu beadwork, so the canopy is ornamented at two scales at once: the shape of the plant, and the beadwork within it. Nothing is left plain anywhere in the composition.
A design this dense needs a room that can absorb it and very little else. Papered throughout a small dining room, a study or a cloakroom it becomes an environment; on a single wall it is merely busy. Keep the fabrics plain, the timber dark and the lighting warm, and let the labyrinth do what it was drawn to do.
