Volteggio di Sakura

The Volteggio di Sakura wallpaper comes from a single gesture, repeated in silence: a magpie with a black head and a long blue tail alights on a cherry branch descending diagonally from one corner of the design to the other. It belongs to the Fauna family, and here nature is not a background but the absolute subject: the crisp profile of the bird, the pale throat, the rounded back, the folded wing edged with blue, the tail of many feathers tapering to fine points. Around it, the Prunus serrulata cherry opens its five-petalled flowers, seen frontally or three-quarters, beside small ovoid buds still closed on their short stems.

I wanted the eye to travel the branch like a breath: from bud to flower, from flower to bird, to the tip of the tail, without strain, without crowding. The ground stays ivory, warm and silent; the outline is held in an almost black blue, flat and absolute, while a single coral-terracotta accent lights the tail and the edge of the wing, and a touch of sage settles on the hearts of the flowers. Up close one discovers the veining of the petals, the parallel barring of the feathers, the small rings of stamens, the notches marking the bark: a fine, almost calligraphic script beneath the large form legible from afar.

That is how I sign, for WallZad, the Volteggio di Sakura wallpaper, made to stay unique across the whole wall, without repeat, where every interior — home, studio, hospitality space — finds its own natural light. In the frame of the drawing the flight comes to rest, and its quiet becomes, for whoever lives in the room, a place to look at each day with different eyes.