Tweed dates from the 1950s and does something that sounds simple and rarely is: it prints the texture of a woven cloth onto a solid ground. The interest lies in the fact that it is unmistakably a print of a weave rather than an attempt to fake one. The flecks and the diagonal grain are drawn, and the ground behind them stays flat and papery.
At a distance the wall reads as tweed. Close to, the illusion drops away and it becomes a small-scale print with a lively speckled field, which is a more interesting thing to live with than a convincing imitation would be. It gives a room the warmth and visual weight of a textile without any of the softness of one.
The paper hangs with a half drop on a 0.53 m roll, with a 53 cm repeat. A half drop offsets every alternate length by half the repeat, which breaks up the horizontal lines a straight match would create and disguises the joins between drops, useful on a design of this density where a visible seam would show. Tweed suits a study, a dressing room, a snug or a hall, and it goes naturally with leather, oak and brass, since it behaves as texture rather than as a competing design.
