Patina Haze is Martyn Lawrence Bullard's study of oxidised metal, and it works because it does not try to be tidy about it. The surface is mottled and clouded rather than evenly aged, with darker passages sitting where a real patina would gather and the ground showing through where it would have worn thin.
There is no motif and no repeat to read, so the paper behaves as a plain with a great deal going on inside it. Every colourway carries some degree of metallic, which means the wall changes with the light: flat and dusty in the morning, warm and slightly molten under lamps, and always more textural at an angle than head on. Seen close it is nearer to a piece of weathered bronze or a tarnished mirror than to a printed paper.
Bullard designs for rooms meant to feel collected rather than decorated, and this belongs in that company: a dining room, a bar, a dressing room, the inside of a niche. It sits well with antique mirror, unlacquered brass and dark timber, and it is the sort of surface that makes ordinary furniture look better than it is. Used across a whole small room it becomes enveloping.
