Tapestry is, in a real sense, the ancestor of everything on this website. In the draughty stone halls of the medieval and Renaissance world, great woven hangings served a very practical purpose, muffling sound and keeping out the cold, but they were also the ultimate display of wealth and taste, and the television of their age. They told stories: the Bayeux embroidery recording a conquest, the mysterious Lady and the Unicorn, the lush verdure hangings that brought whole forests indoors. To own tapestry was to own something precious, learned and warm.
Tapestry-inspired wallpaper inherits all of that. It carries a richness, a depth and a sense of history that flat, printed pattern rarely achieves, and it does it without a loom, a fortune or four hundred years of waiting. Here is where the idea comes from, and the designs on the site that carry it properly.
"Tapestries were the first thing people ever hung on their walls, and the television of their age."
Walls That Told Stories
The designs that inherit the tradition most directly are the ones that are frankly scenes. Verdure in Tapestry Green, from Zoffany's Cotswolds Manor, takes its name from the very thing: a verdure was the woven forest, all dense foliage and half-hidden creatures, and this is that hanging turned into a paper you can run round a whole room. The Brook in Linen, from Morris & Co's Compilation, is the English answer to it, a willow-shaded stream with deer and a heron worked in soft tea-stained colour, and it is drawn with exactly the flatness a weaver would have used.
Verdure, Tapestry Green by Zoffany
The Brook, Linen by Morris & Co
Warmth, Richness and a Sense of Age
The mood in interiors has turned decisively towards warmth and away from the cool and the clinical: layered rooms, deep colour, texture, a feeling of things collected over time. Tapestry-effect designs are made for exactly this. Brocade in Vermilion, from Arte's Les Tapisseries, the French for the tapestries, is the richest here, a deep red brocade with the slight unevenness of real cloth. Eternal Weave in Black, from Graham & Brown's Woven Reverie, goes darker and more architectural, and it is worth knowing that it is printed as a double-width set, two coordinated rolls hung side by side to complete one repeat, which is precisely how a large tapestry was woven and hung in the first place. Ornement in Ochre, from the same Arte collection, is the faded one, a soft gold damask that looks as though it has hung quietly in the same hall for a century or two.
Brocade, Vermilion by Arte
Eternal Weave, Black by Graham & Brown
Ornement, Ochre by Arte
Between them they do the one thing no other kind of pattern quite manages. It is the fastest way to give a brand-new room the soul of a very old one.
"Tapestry is the fastest way to give a new room the soul of a very old one."
How and Where to Use It
Tapestry designs love a room they can make an occasion of. A verdure or forest scene turns a dining room or a snug into something enveloping and atmospheric, especially by lamplight, when the muted colours glow, while a single papered wall behind a bed brings warmth and grandeur without overwhelming. Bird in Madder and Weld, from Morris & Co's Emery Walker's House, is the one for that wall: a facing-pairs bird repeat in madder red, taken from the house of Morris's closest friend and neighbour, and named for the two old dye plants it borrows its colours from. Collines in Indigo, from Arte, is the quieter, more modern reading of the idea, a woven landscape of rolling hills in deep blue that works beautifully above a bed in a plainer room.
Bird, Madder and Weld by Morris & Co
Collines, Indigo by Arte
These designs have a natural affinity with antiques, dark wood and a bit of patina, but they also do something wonderful in a plainer, more modern room, where their richness becomes the one deep, characterful note. Keep the surroundings quiet and let the detail reward a closer look. Look to Zoffany, Arte and Morris & Co for tapestry and verdure-inspired designs with real depth, and order a sample first, since the intricate, faded quality that makes these papers so special is exactly what a small screen cannot show.
For centuries, a tapestry was the most treasured thing on the wall. It still makes a room feel like that: warm, storied and quietly magnificent.
Ready to Hang a Story?
Browse the full Tapestry Inspired collection, or see where it sits among the wider heritage designs in Classic & Traditional and Woodland. If you are not sure how the faded colours will read in your own light, our Sample Service lets you order a swatch of any design before you commit to a full roll.
