Bacchus: the English Ethnic Collection for Lewis & Wood

Bacchus is my adaptation of a rare Elizabethan wall painting that survives in a house in Kent. It is a multivine: a dense, scrolling composition of grapes, fruit, vegetables, snails, and butterflies, named for the bacchanalian abundance woven through it. The original painting is roughly 5 metres wide and 2 metres high. Getting that into a manageable repeat while keeping the scrolling flow intact was one of the more satisfying technical challenges of my career.

Lewis & Wood came to my studio and selected this design from my archive of historic sources. I painted the artwork on paper, pulling out a central element to maintain the spiral movement and nudging it into a more formal vertical arrangement, while trying to hold the spirit of the original throughout. The original border, which in the sixteenth century would have run along the top of the frieze, is incorporated down both sides of both the fabric and the wallpaper. It can be left in place or detached and used as a trim, which gives a creative decorator something genuinely useful to work with.

In 2014, Bacchus won the Homes & Gardens Best Printed Fabric Award. The judges described it as different to anything else: interesting and beautiful, with a stunning soft palette. Two years earlier, Verdure had won the same award.

Bacchus is available in multiple colourways through Lewis & Wood and their global stockists.