Pushkin is a carpet pattern that has been moved onto a wall. The structure comes from Persian weaving, a close all-over field of small motifs held within an implied border logic, and the density is nearer to a knotted rug than to a printed damask. Nothing in it is idle; every part of the field is worked.
It is named for Alexander Pushkin, and the reference is not incidental. The Mariinsky designs take their cue from the Russian appetite for oriental pattern in the nineteenth century, when carpets from further east marked out a well-travelled house. The repeat is short at 38 cm, which is what gives the design its woven quality, the eye reading texture before it reads motif, and it hangs with a straight match on a wide 0.69 m roll, so a wall is covered in fewer drops than usual.
Used across a whole room it behaves like a lining, warm and enclosing, and it takes very well to lamplight. Dark timber, worn leather and old rugs suit it; anything too crisp works against it. In a hall or a small library it does more than a plain colour ever could, and the wide roll keeps it economical over a large area.
