Vintage Roses2/7/2015
‘When is a traditional rose-printed linen not old-fashioned. When it’s in the hands of Bennison Fabrics’s Gilly and Geoff Newberry’, wrote Fiona McCarthy in a story many summers ago.
Gilly Newberry, the owner of Bennison Fabrics, says that this has been a vintage year for roses and she should know. As custodian of legendary interior decorator Geoffrey Bennison’s fabric collection, Gilly continues to reproduce archive documents of 18th and 19th century English and French textiles. Most of these are florals and many feature roses. First used by Geoffrey Bennison in 1979, Roses was adapted from an English document dating from 1840. ‘Geoffrey was especially fond of Roses and this brown leaved colourway came about as the result of a mishap at the printers where the foremost of the leaf silkscreens was printed with brown pigment instead of the original Prussian Blue. A happy mistake that proved to be one of our most successful colourations.’ This all time favourite, Roses, has also been recolored in the Schiaparelli Shocking Pink version on oyster linen, which brings this mid nineteenth century English design bang up to date. ‘This particular colour wave referred to as Shocking Pink on Oyster, is fabulously versatile. It’s the quintessential Bennison fabric because of its classic floral motif and its sheer beauty. It just works wherever it’s used — for curtaining, upholstery, in a drawing room, bedroom, library.’ Honeysuckle Rose is gorgeous too but in a timeworn, barely there way and another beauty is Long Island. A real vintage print taken from a document found in an antique shop on Long Island. Pretty pink roses with blue wisteria type blossoms and teal leaves and with a pale grey stripe in the background. 
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