Items left behind by Alessio (Strip of wallpaper and one tile)

 I thought it would be good to use two of the items that Alessio left behind as a design prompt. Hopefully he and his family are happy and settling in.

The tile and the wallpaper may or may not have been obtained on same occasion.  There was another similar tile in browns and beiges but again with a glassy sheen.  Only one strip of wallpaper left with items left for others. The wall paper states that it is washable.

Information gleaned from object.  On the back the tile is called Riga which to me sounds exotic and elegant but I could not quite place the name geographically so I had to look it up.  Wikipaedia tells me that "Riga is the capital, primate, and the largest city of Latvia, as well as the most populous city in the Baltic States." "Russians . . account for close to half the population in Riga." "After more than 700 years of German, Swedish and Russian rule, Latvia with Riga as its capital city, declared its independence on 18 November 1918." "The city lies on the gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Baltic Sea." "Riga was founded in 1201." "Riga's historical centre is a Unesco world Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and19th century wooden architecture." The tile has a very modern look about it so maybe the name connects what looks like a very modern tile to a trend in Riga of Art Nouveau which was new and groundbreaking in its day.  The tile comes from Tile Merchant.  On the back there is a picture of toaster and kettle in front of plugs and a kitchen wall.  This seems to suggest that the tile be placed in a kitchen.  The other place that I would have thought of putting it was a bathroom. From a design point of view, however, I can see there are spaces between the tiles so maybe somewhere that mould could occur would not be compatible for the tile.

To continue this journey of assessing two random objects from a design point of view, I would not put the tile with the wallpaper.  The colours blend but the materiality seems different and therefore where they are meant to go.  The wallpaper and tile could be set apart by using a plain backing to the tile and then putting the wallpaper on a different wall.   Both are striking and do not compete in this way.

The wallpaper sparked some memories as daily objects or music sometimes does.  One was a long forgotten memory of helping my Dad, who was a builder but was doing a wallpapering job at home. I had shelved that memory away and was surprised it came up.  I had spontaneously gone over to help him take the wallpaper off the wall. I think the reason I had not thought of it in years was because after his early death I put those reflections away.  How does this relate to design?  Seemingly ordinary objects are imbued with affects, association, impacts, memories as was discussed in today's design unit about not using certain colours, or shapes of flowers in a learning disability school. (Several books have been written on designing for dementia). When it comes to wallpaper, it is used less frequently than paint so often is personal and intimate. Woodchip wallpaper was used a lot in council flats and tends to be quite utilitarian and impersonal.  A basic wallpaper.  Generally mint or cream.  (Nice colours but had become standard fare through general usage).  This wallpaper strip seems fashionable to me. A good wallpaper strikes the viewer as being upmarket. This wallpaper looks backwards to the Victorian love of birds (in a cage most often) and foliage (ferns etc) but it is is made modern by the addition of blue to the foliage and the bird too looks very modern/exotic by the addition of red and grey to more usual gold and blue. (Bird colour varies to tone in with various (eight) backgrounds). The greeny golds of the foliage complement perfectly the bluey golds of the bird. (Foliage colour varies according to name of design and background). It seems to be an old idea, birds and foliage but given a modern twist. The name of the wallpaper design is a surprise as it is called after a hospital, Great Ormond St.  Colour Tropical. It comes from Little Greene, Paint and Papers, London Wallpapers IV.  I thought it would be interesting to research it further. I found by tapping in Great Ormond St wallpaper that it came up with Little Greene, London Wallpapers IV. It stated that "A colourful parrot motif, closely based on one of a multi-layered group of papers removed from the ground floor rear closet of a very early-18th century terrace house opposite Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.  This design was subsequently machine-made on cellulose paper in the late 19th century."  So Alessio has left a strip of wallpaper with a traceable pedigree and it did hark back to an earlier tradition.  It has the elements of classic wallpaper design. The wallpaper is shown on the Little Greene advert as having eight colourways.  Parchment is the name of the one with that background and Tropical is the white background.  The design works really well with both and the other six names of this design.  I think I prefer Parchment. It also comes in Carmine where birds are red and foliage grey and pink on a white background. Other colourways are Signature (grey foliage) and Cappucino (coffee background), Stable has magnolia background and green, cream to pale beige foliage and Galette has white background with brown/green foliage.  Finally, it comes in Verditure, with hint of green in background colour, and foliage is grey/green and birds green and yellow, and yellow and red with green and grey. The birds change accordingly to match in with foliage and background. The advert offers some great colours in paint.  Subtle which offsets the striking wallpaper really well.  One paint is called slaked lime.  Looks white, I like the name and love the colour. Other paints are pearl, aquamarine, carmine, hellebore which blend with the various colourways. Also Dolphin, Down, Perennial Grey, Knightsbridge, Loft white, Dash of Soot, Rubine Ashes, Flint, Green Stone - Pale, and Serpentine. The wallpaper roll is priced at £101.60 when on sale, or £127.00 on another advert and is in stock. 

My other memory of wallpaper that came to mind, is the short story The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which is a disturbing tale. A woman is languishing in her bedroom as a treatment for nerves.  This story has been adopted by feminists as a treatise on how not to help a woman get better.  What was needed was understanding, fresh air, patience and stimulus. It had an ethos of the home becoming a prison. A classic of literature and shows how exposure to a daily confinement went wrong. Arsenic also being in wallpaper at the time. Too much isolation is of course not good for either sex. Although this is a psychological story it ties in with what we know as trainee landscape architects about  getting out into nature promoting wellbeing.

Thanks to Alessio, I have researched Riga and found out about Great Ormond St Wallpaper. He does not know that he delivered a long distance tutorial! 

Although, here I have focused on interior design, I still had to reflect on the colour wheel by looking at eight types of background for the same wallpaper and reflecting on what paints would complement them. It made me think about the versatility of paint and how it can embody a slight hue to offset more dramatic colours.  A neighbour of mine who is a keen gardener told me that his grandmother often said that "Nature's colours do not clash!"  They do not in a wild form as a riot of meadow or wildflowers or random cottage garden planting. However, for landscape architecture it is governed by a colour wheel and formal planting plans. Rather like when I took a floristry course, we had to do pink and commercial colours.  There was a perceived notion of what was acceptable, mainly because that was commercial.  Unless you were a top florist, then more freedom was displayed. In landscape architecture, in order to blend colours or clam them down we do not have plants bearing the names of a hint of . . .such as we do with paints so we have to think creatively how to do that. One way would be to use the central colour alone of a plant to carry on from the colour of next door planting.  You are subtly carrying on that colour.  Or to intersperse with white (which in paints often carries a hint of).  Or to leave a gap before changing texture and/or colour rather like the example of putting wallpaper on another wall. Or to think what the next colour on the colour wheel is eg could violet and blue go together?