A. W. Pugin designed the interiors of the mid-nineteenth-century Gothic revival, and the damask that carries his name here comes from a block print of that period rather than from a modern drawing of one. The Cole & Son studio redrew it, opening the pattern out slightly, but the symbolic motifs were kept, among them the pineapple, which recurs throughout Pugin's own work as the old shorthand for wealth and hospitality.
It is printed as a flock. Fine fibres are applied to the paper so the pattern stands proud of the ground, catching light on its raised surface and holding shadow at its edges: a technique developed to imitate cut velvet wall hangings at a fraction of their cost, and one of the few printing methods that gives a wall genuine relief. The 90 cm repeat is long, appropriate to a damask of this weight, and the straight match holds the vertical axis true.
Flock belongs in rooms used in the evening, where raking light from lamps finds the pile. A dining room, a library, a small hall with dark joinery. It has real presence, and it asks for plain heavy textiles around it rather than competing pattern. Rolls are 0.52 m wide by 10 m long.
