Summer Lily is the Cole & Son Lily redrawn at a smaller scale, and the reduction changes its use entirely. Where the original is a statement, this reads as a field: the flowers small enough to become texture from across a room, still clearly drawn when approached. Reducing an existing design is not a small decision, and it has been made well: nothing in the drawing is simplified, only scaled.
The lily is a difficult flower to pattern, since its form is architectural and its trumpet reads as a solid shape rather than a mass of petals. Drawn small, that geometry works in the design's favour. The repeat holds a clear rhythm and the stems provide a vertical structure between the blooms, so the paper has direction as well as pattern.
Colour is washed rather than saturated, running through botanical hues and chalky neutrals, with one worked over a dark ground, and the design behaves quite differently as a pale texture than as a contrast print. A 50.9 cm straight repeat and a wide 0.69 m roll make it economical to hang over large areas. It suits a bedroom, a bathroom, or a hall to be lined on every wall. It also makes a good companion to a larger pattern used elsewhere in the same scheme.
