Cole & Son | Verdure Tapestry Silk

This is the same seventeenth-century Flemish verdure, the tapestry displayed in the King's Presence Chamber at Kensington Palace, printed onto a base of 100% natural slub silk. The change of substrate changes everything. Slub silk is uneven by nature, with thicker and thinner passages running through the yarn, so the ground carries an irregularity no paper can, and every panel comes out distinctly different from the last.

Silk hung on a wall behaves differently from paper. It takes light along the fibre and gives it back, so the colour deepens and lifts as you move past it. That is why the grandest royal residences were hung in silk for three centuries, and it is the effect Cole & Son are reaching for here. The palette has the softened tonality of a beautifully aged tapestry, which suits the medium.

It is a bespoke offering, printed to order with a ten-week lead time. The panel is composed of two 105 cm drops forming 210 cm wide by 350 cm high, each printed on a 137 cm roll with a 16 cm selvedge either side for overlapping and splicing, and it can be tailored to any space. This is a commission rather than a purchase, and it belongs in a dining room, a principal bedroom or a hall where a hung wall is the intention from the outset.