The Chateau de Villandry has among the grandest and most disciplined gardens in France, geometry laid out over acres, hedges cut to the inch, water held in straight lines, and the toile that borrows its name is a gentler thing than that suggests. It shows parkland rather than parterre: a pastoral landscape of trees, waterways and follies, with figures at their leisure among them.
It is printed in the true Toile de Jouy manner, over a plain ground, with all the tone built from finely engraved line. Nothing is shaded. The darkness of a tree comes from how tightly the hatching is packed. That technique is what gives an old toile its particular quality of light, and it survives here intact.
A toile is happiest used without restraint. One wall of it looks tentative; a whole room, or a room with the ceiling and the cupboard fronts papered too, is when it becomes what it was always meant to be, a lining rather than a decoration. Villandry suits a bedroom, a small dining room, a dressing room or a cloakroom, and it goes with painted furniture, a plain check, an old rug and very little else. It is a paper that improves as the room around it gets simpler.
