Sudbury is a classical damask at medium scale, its motifs drawn from the ornamental vocabulary of the eighteenth century: urns, swags of garland and the symmetrical framing that holds them together. Medium scale is the significant part, large enough to be read as a damask and small enough to line an ordinary room without overwhelming it.
The ground is printed as silk moire, the watered pattern that appears when ribbed silk is pressed, and it gives the paper its particular quality. Moire is never still. It moves as the light does, so the damask sits on a surface that shimmers faintly rather than on a flat field, and the combination is what makes the design read as a wall-hung fabric rather than as paper. Moire is difficult to print convincingly, since the watered effect depends on very fine variation rather than on contrast.
Every colouring is tonal, the figure close in value to its ground, with one worked over a metallic bronze that lifts the whole surface. Formal rooms suit it, a dining room, a study, a stair hall, and it is particularly good behind furniture with some age to it. Being a regular classical repeat, it will take pictures hung densely without visual argument. Below a dado it can be used alone, with plain paint above.
