Khulu means most important, and the vessels the design celebrates have earned the name. Ardmore's hand-coiled vases now sit in galleries and private collections, and it is those objects, rather than their subject matter, that Khulu Vases takes as its motif. The wallpaper is a picture of pottery.
Each vase is drawn entwined with the animals that decorate it, so that leopards, parrots and lions belong both to the vessel and to the wall around it, and it is not always clear where the object ends. The handling is watercolour, laid in soft washes with the paper showing through, which keeps a monumental subject from becoming heavy. The scale is grand: at a 68.5 cm repeat these are large forms, and they need a wall that can take them.
It hangs to a third drop, which is the useful detail. Each drop steps down by a third of the repeat, so the vases fall in a diagonal rather than a grid and no two adjacent drops read as identical. The wide 0.69 m roll means fewer seams across a given wall. A dining room, a stair hall or a generous landing will hold it comfortably; a small room will not.
