Hovingham is an early Victorian damask that has been edited. The original would have been drawn dense, every leaf modelled and every scroll filled in the manner of the 1840s, and the studio has taken detail out rather than adding it, leaving the structure of the motif and a good deal of open ground around it.
What survives is the skeleton of the pattern: the large ogival frame, the turned leaf forms at its shoulders, the flower at its centre. Simplified in this way it works at a distance, where a fully detailed damask would go muddy, and it keeps a certain crispness at close range. The repeat is 64 cm on a 0.52 m roll and the match is half drop, so each length sets the motif half a repeat below its neighbour and the pattern moves diagonally across the wall instead of forming vertical columns.
Large damasks need height, and this one is best in rooms with a proper cornice: a drawing room, a dining room, a principal bedroom, a hall with a good stair. It is a traditional pattern used in a modern way, which means it sits as comfortably with contemporary furniture as with brown wood, provided the rest of the room stays plain.
