Cole & Son | Trees of Eden LIFE

Life is the tree at the centre of the Eden story, and Martyn Lawrence Bullard has drawn it accordingly: a broad canopy resplendent with budding fruit, boughs luxuriant with foliage, and the Cole & Son wisteria threaded through it as it is through all three panels in the series. It is the most abundant of them, and the least architectural.

The source is archive chintz, that fusion of eastern motifs with traditional British heritage design which produced some of the most highly prized textiles of its period, and the panel is painted to scale rather than compressed into a repeat. A distressed, batik-like finish keeps the colour from ever looking freshly printed; the surface has the softened, slightly worn quality of an old hanging.

Each panel is 0.7 m wide and 4 m long, and it hangs with a random match, which is worth knowing. There is no pattern to align, so it is forgiving on walls that are not square and it wastes very little at the top and bottom. Three panels side by side make a grove; one on its own makes a centrepiece. In a hall, a stairwell or a bedroom with a high ceiling it gives a room its subject in a single gesture.