Scenic

Scenic was conceived by guest designer Elizabeth Roberts of Elizabeth Roberts Architects, whose practice of crafting elegant, livable spaces is built upon her signature blend of historical details and contemporary values.

Roberts approached the wallpaper design process as she does all of her projects, by looking at history and context. To begin, she and her team scoured archives for the earliest examples of wallpaper, specifically the historic landscape murals found in New York’s grand dining rooms before the invention of repeat-printing technology. What they found were beautiful botanical scenes—and abundance of exoticism, especially Chinoiserie. “Back then, there was status in showing scenery from far-off lands,” says Roberts. “We wanted to celebrate something more local, to showcase the beauty in our own backyard.” A 1910 postcard of Prospect Park, the Frederick Law Olmstead–designed centerpiece of Brooklyn, where Roberts both lives and practices, became her inspiration.

Taking the postcard’s undulating horizon and deep perspective as her starting point, Roberts reinterprets the depiction of the park using lines evocative of an architect’s sketch. With cross hatching, stippling, and a wide array of line thicknesses, her hand-wrought ink drawing combines the loose gestural quality of a painted brushstroke with the precision of the micron line. Intricate yet expansive, Roberts’s design can be seen as a sort of meditation on the bucolic beauty of this urban landscape.

As a panorama that is at once familiar and fresh, Scenic captures the spirit of a city that marries its rich history with fresh energy and contemporary design. Elegant enough for formal spaces, Scenic would be equally at home in more industrial or casual rooms because of the way it balances history and contemporaneity.

Scenic can be custom configured to work around mantles and with ceiling heights of 8′ or more. It is available in seven colorways, from a light metallic tone-on-tone effect to a blue-print inspired cream-and-lapis combination to moody mixtures of deep greens and blues.