Cole & Son | Jali Trellis

A jali is a pierced screen: stone cut into repeating openwork so that light and air pass through a wall without the wall being opened. The screens on Indian temples and palaces are among the most disciplined ornament ever cut, and Martyn Lawrence Bullard's Jali Trellis borrows their logic rather than their literal geometry.

The motif is small and floral, set on a regular lattice and drawn at a scale that stops it declaring itself. This is a semi-plain: from a few feet away it reads as a worked, faintly textile surface, and only close to does the individual flower resolve. That is a useful quality. It gives a room the interest of pattern without the commitment of one, which is precisely what a flat painted neutral cannot do.

Bullard conceived it as a companion to the larger, more emphatic Bahia doorway, and it still performs that role well, taking the pressure off a bold design used elsewhere or holding a hall and landing together while a stronger paper does the work in the rooms beyond. It is equally good alone, in a bedroom or a dressing room where the scheme is carried by the fabrics. It hangs easily, and the small motif absorbs an out-of-true wall without any of it showing at the seams.