Victorian Star comes out of the Cole & Son archive and is about as small as a wallpaper motif gets: a single star, evenly spaced, on a 4.5 cm repeat. At that scale the individual motif stops being read as a star at all and becomes a texture, an even and faintly sparkling field that behaves more like a woven cloth than a printed pattern.
This is exactly what nineteenth-century papers of the kind were for. They were the workhorses of the house, hung in the rooms nobody was meant to admire, and they have lasted because they are almost impossible to tire of. The drawing is unfussy, the grounds are pale and quiet, and there is no incident anywhere in the design to date it.
The short repeat and straight match make it one of the most economical papers to hang. Very little is wasted at the top or bottom of a drop, and the pattern lines up so quickly that awkward returns, reveals and cupboard fronts cost almost nothing. On a 0.53 m roll, 10.05 m long, it goes a long way. Use it in a child's room, an attic bedroom, a back stair or a dressing room, or as the calm counterpart to something far more decorative in the room next door.
