Seta e Lacca

I imagined the Seta e Lacca wallpaper as the suspended instant of a theatrical gesture: a dancer of the traditional theatre turns in three-quarter view, the carved wooden mask tilted in a serene and faintly enigmatic expression, one arm raised to open the folded silk fan beside her face, the other hand gathering the long sleeve of the kimono in a wide curve. The layered robes fall in angular planes that taper towards the bound feet, the figure alone and asymmetrical within an empty, breathing field, according to the discipline of nihonga, the Japanese painting that here finds its voice.

In the white, crazed gofun of the mask, in the planes of mineral pigment blended with the delicacy of bokashi, in the ink lines that draw every fold, I recognise an art that does not describe but holds back: indigo and charcoal black in the outer robe, a flash of vermilion at the neck, ochre and moss green in the obi, powdered gold marking the crests and the ribs of the fan. It is an image made to be read from a distance in its wide gesture and close up in the weave of the brocade, in the lacquered threads of the hair, in the crystalline grain of the pigment that catches the light in a way that is never the same twice.

I bring this dancer onto walls as one would bring a museum painting, to give back, in any interior, the same suspension between movement and stillness. At WallZad, every Seta e Lacca wallpaper comes from a printing faithful to the original painted matter, calibrated so that its light never goes out, in any room.