Salvage is a paper about surfaces that have been left alone. It reproduces panels of tarnished metal, copper going green at the edges, rust breaking through, the mottled bloom that appears on old sheet, with the irregularity of walls that have been stripped back and never made good.
The pattern, such as it is, comes from the panel divisions: broad rectangles with visible edges, so the wall has a joint line and a sense of scale rather than being a continuous wash. Within each panel the surface is entirely irregular. It is a decorator's trick performed properly, which is the difference between a paper that imitates age and one that reproduces how age behaves. The trick with any distressed finish is knowing when to stop, and this one does: the corrosion never resolves into a pattern of its own.
Colour covers the range real corrosion produces, from pale plaster tones through oxidised blues and greens to metallic silvers and golds, and several carry genuine metallic pigment so that the tarnish catches light. It belongs where an industrial reference can be taken without irony: a kitchen, a bar, a study, a cloakroom. Against blackened steel, old timber and unpolished stone it looks entirely at home. It is also a way of giving a new building some age without resorting to reclaimed materials.
