A jungle at the precise moment between day and night, when the light has left the canopy but the animals have not yet retreated. A leopard stretches along a high branch, its spotted coat electric against the deep teal-black ground. A toucan perches below, its extraordinary beak — red, yellow, black — the most emphatic point of colour in the composition. A monkey climbs through the middle distance, half-hidden in shadow, curious and unhurried.
Around and between them, the foliage is extraordinary: large tropical leaves in every shade of green from sage to near-black, exotic flowers — passionflower, pendulous tubular blooms, white star-shaped blossoms — opening in the half-light as if for an audience that may or may not be watching. Clusters of dark berries and seed pods complete a scene of almost overwhelming botanical richness.
The dark navy ground is the design's defining decision. It transforms the tropical from a bright, holiday register into something older and more serious — the jungle as it appears in the great natural history paintings of the 19th century, as a place of genuine wonder and genuine wildness. Exceptional in dining rooms, living rooms, bedrooms and hallways where the natural world is approached not as decoration but as a subject of endless, inexhaustible fascination.
