Peaseblossom comes out of the Cole & Son block archive, where it sat for many years before being brought back into production. It is a butterfly print, and it is drawn the way butterflies were drawn when the block was cut: in outline, from above, wings open, with the markings described by fine engraved line rather than by colour.
The repeat is short at 35.9 cm and the insects are scattered rather than aligned, so at any distance the wall reads as an even, animated texture. There is no directional pull and no visible grid; the straight match keeps the scatter consistent across the joins without drawing attention to them. Printed in two tones, the design depends entirely on the relationship between mark and ground, which is why it changes so much between colourways. Nothing about the design is heavy, and nothing about it insists on being noticed.
Its name comes from one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and it has that register: light, faintly bookish, never sentimental. Small rooms take it well, a cloakroom, a back stair, a bedroom under the eaves. Hung 0.52 m wide on 10 m rolls with a straight match, it is straightforward to hang and simple to calculate.
