Riccio tra le Nocciole

The Riccio tra le Nocciole wallpaper comes from a gesture of water and colour, a wandering watercolour that lets the brush lay transparent pools one over another. At the centre of the scene sits a hedgehog, its body round, muzzle and paws gathered forward, its back built from short radial strokes that suggest the spines. Above it curves a slender hazel branch, laden with paired hazelnuts, while wide oval leaves with gently toothed edges open in a rosette, framing the figure without smothering it.

The white of the paper stays visible here and there, a clear breath that makes the composition calm, almost suspended: nothing is crowded, everything finds room to exist. The palette keeps faith with the colours of the autumn undergrowth — warm sienna, caramel, sage, moss, a leaf or two turned to ochre or dusty pink — and close up reveals its true nature: the uneven granulation of colour dried along the edges, the leaf veins drawn with an almost dry brush, the fine whiskers and the small dark nose that give the hedgehog its mild expression.

For a child’s room I wanted an image that keeps company without looming: a gentle presence, able to show at a distance a whole, legible figure, and close up a detail that invites another look. It is an idea of shelter, of a season pausing for a moment beneath the leaves. At WallZad the Riccio tra le Nocciole wallpaper is carried onto the wall by hand with the same care as the original brush, because children’s wallpaper too deserves the material authenticity of a real work.