One of my favourite fabrics in the Tinsmiths range is the Ledbury Elizabethan Fabric. It is a design that feels both deeply familiar and slightly strange: dark, irregular, and entirely out of step with much of today’s fabric design. Where so many patterns look to the eighteenth century for inspiration — to large sash windows, pale interiors, Indian Tree of Life motifs and chintzes — this fabric belongs to an earlier moment altogether.
The Ledbury Elizabethan design comes from a time of oak-panelled interiors and regional vernacular building traditions, before the widespread commerce of printed wallpapers. It recalls a period when decorative artists worked directly for merchants and gentry across the provinces of England and Wales, creating work that was local, practical and expressive rather than refined or fashionable.
Ledbury itself is fortunate to have one of the most complete surviving examples of sixteenth-century vernacular wall painting. The Painted Room at the end of Church Lane — now part of the Town Council offices — was painted between 1575 and 1600. Using readily available pigments such as carbon black, red and yellow ochre, red lead, umber and blue verditer, the (unknown) artist created an interlaced strapwork frieze punctuated with floral motifs, alongside biblical texts framed within strapwork borders. The painting runs freely over panels and timbers, paying little heed to the surfaces beneath; brushstrokes remain visible, and there is a wonderful spontaneity to the work.
This strapwork design first appeared at Tinsmiths in 2014, when Paul Bommer used it as the background for our Ledburyshire Map, commissioned to mark our tenth anniversary. Having lived with the motif for some time, I became increasingly absorbed by it and decided to explore it as a fabric. With the help of Clare Stark, the design was carefully put into repeat, and we have produced it in two different scales, large and small, for several years now.
Having used the fabric in my own homes, and specified it many times for customers, I have been consistently delighted by how naturally it sits within period interiors. It looks entirely at home in timber-framed farmhouses, as though it has always belonged there. Despite its predominantly carbon-black ground, it performs the small miracle of never feeling heavy or oppressive, instead balancing beautifully with oak, stone and country furniture.
We have an excellent book ‘Artisan Art, Vernacular wall paintings in the Welsh Marches, 1550-1650‘ in the Tinsmiths book selection which provides an in depth survey of paintings of this kind and their social and cultural context. By Dr Kathryn Davies, it represents many years of studying these works across the Welsh Marches and is illustrated throughout with examples of Tudor wall paintings.
Last two photographs by Mike Garlick
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