Cole & Son | Seasonal Woods Grasscloth

Seasonal Woods is the Woods design slowed down. The birches are painted in a softer hand than the original, and around them a whole year is compressed into one scene: ivy and holly, bramble berries and apples, woodpeckers and robins in the branches, butterflies crossing between. Six drops complete the tableau, which measures 3.12 by 4 metres.

On grasscloth the design gains a physical texture the printed versions cannot have. Sisal fibres run horizontally across the wall in visible strands, catching light unevenly and giving the woodland an organic ground that suits it. Grasscloth is a natural material and the panels vary from one to the next; that variation is inherent to it rather than a fault, and is part of why it reads as a surface rather than a print. Grasscloth also absorbs sound, which is worth knowing in a room with hard floors and little soft furnishing.

It can be hung as a single panorama across one wall, or repeated to line a room entirely. Because the composition is fixed at six drops, the wall wants measuring and setting out before ordering. In a study, a dining room or a bedroom hung to the ceiling it does what a good panorama does, which is to replace the wall rather than decorate it.