Cole & Son | Magnolia Tree Silk

Silk was hung on walls long before paper was, and the houses that could afford it treated the material as a fitted textile rather than as a decoration. Magnolia Tree Silk belongs to that lineage. The design is an archive print with its flowers repainted by hand, and the magnolia is used as the Victorians used it, as an emblem of the Orientalist taste that ran through nineteenth-century decoration, the tree having been cultivated in China for centuries before it reached Europe.

It is offered on two silk grounds and they behave quite differently. The raw slub silk carries the natural irregularity of the fibre, so every drop is genuinely unique and the surface has a visible, tactile grain. The smooth silk has no slub and a low, even sheen, which reads as more formal and returns light in a continuous sweep rather than in broken points.

The trail climbs, and the 72 cm straight repeat on a 0.52 m roll gives it room to do so. A bedroom or a dressing room is its natural place, where the material can be seen and touched at close range. Custom colouring and sizing are available through the maker's bespoke service. The same design is also produced on a conventional ground, where the surface is not required to carry weight of its own.