Through stylization, visual texture, and exploring different techniques, we turned one of Linköping's strongest symbols into wallpaper: Domkyrkan, and its neo gothic portals.
Domkyrkan is one of Linköping's strongest symbols. We became drawn to the carved framework on the south and west portals. Made when Helgo Zettervall restored the cathedral to its current neo-Gothic form in the second half of the 1800s.
Could this beautiful portal become a Linlava pattern?
After deep dives and experiments we came out with three patterns, three sizes, three visual textures, and four colorways. The answer must be yes.
We abstracted, stylized, simplified. And then we started to add.
Two less obvious choices were made in the stylization. First, the iron studs were merged with the forms around them, using negative space to create a new shape and a new focal point. Simplification through combination. Second: we used the depth of the deep wood carvings as form itself. Look at the pattern and you'll see that the line weights vary. The shadows cast by the raised carving are not applied as an effect. They are drawn as part of the shape, widening the forms on one side. The pattern doesn't depict the door. It remembers the door's depth. This is most visible in our flat patterns evoking woodblock printing on linen.
The frieze, built in
The cathedral doors don't have a border glued on top. The sawtooth frieze at the upper edge is forged from the same iron framework as the medallions below it. One piece, one composition.
Traditional wallpaper friezes work the other way. The field is printed on one roll, the frieze on another, and the paperhanger pastes the frieze over the top as a separate strip. It is not a design decision. It is how wallpaper has been printed for three hundred years, a fixed repeat cylinder and a mechanical limit on how a pattern can evolve from floor to ceiling.
We built the frieze into the field. The top row of quatrefoils compresses into the triangular rhythm of the frieze in a continuous transition, the way the original ironwork does. No seam between pattern and border. The wall reads as one architectural surface from baseboard to ceiling.
The difference is subtle in description. On a wall, it is immediate.
Trompe-l'œil: Depth Through Illusion
We've been exploring letterpress and relief effects lately. Here we took it several steps deeper, simulating carving in stone and plaster. Terracotta, Velvet, and Verdigris Stone all carry trompe-l'œil effects. Not to shock, but to create a quiet sense of permanence. The geometry appears to rise gently from the surface, catching light in a way that feels crafted, substantial, real.
Visual Texture Creates Ambiance
The patterns are further shaped by the textures we chose for them.
- Linen gives weave and softness.
- Velvet gives depth and richness.
- Terracotta simulates hand-troweled lime plaster, warm and tactile.
- Verdigris Stone brings the cathedral's own materiality onto the wall: limestone and oxidized copper, cool and monumental.
When we have staged these wallpapers, it makes us happy to see how much difference in ambiance a change in texture creates. Same geometry. Very different room.
