Cole & Son | Protea Garden Silk

On silk, Protea Garden becomes a different object. The ground is a woven cloth rather than a paper, and the slubs and irregularities of the natural fibre run across the printed garden, catching light unevenly so that the design brightens and dims as you move past it. Nothing about the drawing changes. Everything about the surface does.

The composition is the same Ardmore garden: king protea opening among vines and leaves, sunbirds at the nectar, chameleons forming the curved handles of the vessel at its centre. Silk suits it because the ceramic idiom it comes from is itself glazed, outlined and filled and patterned within the fill, and reliant on a surface that returns light. Hung, the two things agree with one another.

It is printed to order rather than held in stock, with a lead time stated at around ten weeks, so it belongs in a scheme planned well ahead. Rooms used in the evening reward it most, where lamplight rakes across the weave. A non-woven version of the same design exists for walls where silk would be impractical. Silk also asks for more care in the hanging than paper does, and the work is best put in the hands of someone who has done it before. Specified early it is straightforward; specified late it is not.