Vessilli di Cera

The Vessilli di Cera wallpaper is born of a gesture every child knows: planting a flag on top of a world just discovered. It belongs to the Crayon Cosmos style, a language that returns to the wall the very material of childhood — wax crayon, dense, a little streaked, held firm within crisp outlines. The drawing shows a chain of small hills, miniature humps and peaks built from overlapping strokes of wax, running unbroken along the whole central band; on each summit stands a thin pole holding a flag — triangular pennants, small rectangular standards, the odd swallowtail — bent slightly at the mast, as if moved by an imaginary wind.

The colour is that of the box of crayons we all had: cadmium red, egg yellow, cobalt blue, grass green, orange and a violet, each laid down as a decided area, with the paper showing pale between one stroke and the next. Up close, the diagonal scribbles that model each hill mix with little stars and white paper dust scattered across the sky, small distant worlds waiting to be reached.

I sign this drawing as an invitation to gentle discovery, the kind made one step at a time, one flag at a time. In every stroke of wax I recognise the steady hand of someone who does not fear imperfection, and in the care with which WallZad brings this wallpaper onto the wall of a child’s room I find the same respect for the original gesture, without betraying its material.