Orchidea d’Inchiostro

I am the Orchidea d’Inchiostro wallpaper, born from a single brushstroke that fixed on aged ivory paper a wild orchid among grasses bent by the wind, beside a low rock smoothed by time.

I do not tell of a garden but of an instant: the stem arching, the buds turned in different directions, the blades of grass crossing like the strokes of an old script. Every line comes from loaded ink that dilutes into warm greys, as far as the white of the paper left to breathe. It is the lesson of suibokuga: to say everything with little, to let the void hold up the form.

For the bedroom I choose the sobriety of silence: in the warm half-light of evening the smoky tones of the ink grow deeper still, and the rock, barely warmed by a veil of ochre, becomes a discreet presence beside sleep. It is an image that does not ask for attention but returns it to whoever stops to look closely, discovering the grain of the paper, the tremor of the brush, the point where the tip lifted.

In my studio every shade of the Orchidea d’Inchiostro wallpaper is calibrated by hand so that the depth of the blacks and the delicacy of the greys stay faithful to the original gesture, print after print. It is work of listening before it is technique: the same patience with which a brush waits to be loaded with ink again before tracing the next mark.