Reticolo del Nilo

I sign the Reticolo del Nilo wallpaper as an act of translation: the irregular hide of the crocodile becomes discipline, and discipline becomes design. I belong to the tradition of Animalier, which has always turned animal skin into decorative language, but here I take it to its strictest logic: each natural scale becomes a geometric cell, a rounded square or a rectangle with a slightly raised centre and bevelled edges, interlocked with its neighbour in strict rows that never break the grid.

The motif grows and narrows — larger plates beside smaller ones — echoing the natural rhythm of the hide without ever losing the geometric order that governs it. The warm sand ground shows only in the fine seams between the cells, while olive-green dominates the surface in two close tones: a deep bottle-olive for the raised centres, a lighter moss-olive for the bevelled edges. No third colour intervenes; the density is high and continuous, with no bare ground left showing.

In designing the Reticolo del Nilo wallpaper, I thought of a surface that protects as much as it seduces: an armour made liveable, able to give order and character to a wall, in a home, an office, a hotel lobby, wherever natural light can accompany it throughout the day. WallZad oversees its digital print on non-woven paper, rendering the almost embossed relief of each scale, so the geometry reads from afar and the material is felt up close.