Paradise Tree is a tree of life drawn without the usual formality. The boughs sprawl rather than arch, breaking the symmetry the type normally depends on, and the flowers and leaves growing along them are various enough that no two parts of the canopy read the same way. It is a pattern about abundance, and it has been allowed to be untidy in the service of that.
The scale is generous, a 76 cm repeat on a 0.52 m roll, and it is hung with a half-drop match, which is what keeps a design of this density from stacking into visible columns. Each length is offset against the last, so the boughs interlock across the joins and the canopy continues rather than restarts. On a full wall the effect is of one tree rather than of a repeated one.
The design comes from Cole & Son's archive of classics, and one of its grounds returns to the deep greens that nineteenth-century houses favoured in their principal rooms. That history is worth knowing when placing it. Rooms with proper mouldings and reasonable ceiling height suit it, where a canopy can run its full length before meeting a cornice. A half-drop match also asks for a little more allowance in the quantities, which is worth settling early.
