de Le Cuona | Elizabeth Paisley – Cygnet

Elizabeth Paisley is a paisley treated with restraint. The motif is large and open rather than tight and busy, and in the Cygnet colourway it is tone on tone, so the pattern appears as a soft shadow rather than a bold statement. A wool and cotton blend gives it a dry, slightly textured hand and a good weight, and it falls well. In a room it adds depth and a quiet sense of age without leaning on tradition, and it reads from across the room as texture before it reads as pattern.

The cloth is 75% wool and 25% cotton, and it is 135 cm wide. The vertical repeat is 64 cm and the horizontal repeat is 68 cm, which is generous and worth planning around. It is sold by the half metre under the reference ELI1, from de Le Cuona, and it is intended for curtains. We have not been given a Martindale figure or a place of manufacture, so please ask us if either matters to your project and we will confirm them.

We would hang Elizabeth Paisley as full-length curtains in a sitting room or main bedroom, where the scale of the repeat has space to show across a generous drop. It works well as a pair of curtains at a tall sash window, letting the pattern fall in soft vertical folds. We like it with plain natural linen on the sofa, limewashed or chalky walls, and a rug in a close, muted weave. Keep other patterns small and quiet so the paisley remains the one that matters.

With a 64 cm vertical repeat, you will need extra length to match the pattern at each drop, so allow for at least one full repeat of waste per width and ask your workroom to calculate before ordering. We would interline the curtains to give the wool body and to protect it from the light. Cut from a single batch, match across the leading edges, and have the workroom hang the curtains for a few days before the final hem.