Tasked with designing his close friend Woodson Taulbee’s Manhattan studio apartment in the 1960s, the great American decorator Billy Baldwin found inspiration in a work of art: a bold Henri Matisse brush-and-ink that Baldwin later recalled he had “bought for nothing.” In that work, from the artist’s 1947 Deux Fillettes series, a jet-black tree stands silhouetted behind two women at a table.
Woodson Taulbee's Manhattan studio apartment was designed by Billy Baldwin, who created the Arbre de Matisse upholstery fabric from the Henri Matisse work shown.
Horst P. Horst. Courtesy of CNP Archives; © 2020 Succession H. Matisse / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.The tree would make a marvelous wallpaper and fabric, thought Baldwin—and Taulbee, the man behind Woodson Wallpapers, which popularized a look of allover pattern with its colorful offerings, could bring it to life. He tapped illustrator friend Jay Crawford (who redesigned the violets on Bonwit Teller’s shopping bags around the same time) to translate the Matisse into a repeating motif. The resulting cotton—initially called Foliage and now known as Arbre de Matisse—in coffee- brown and white was applied to Taulbee’s sofa, L-shaped banquette, and slipper chair, all classic Baldwin models.
Taulbee’s “tall room,” so named for its unusual dimensions, became an icon. It graced the pages of Vogue in 1965 and later the cover of Billy Baldwin Decorates, cementing the legacy of the featured fabric, which Taulbee produced in a range of colors, including pink. Crawford, who opened his own textile brand, Quadrille, in 1969, would eventually begin producing Woodson Wallpapers’ patterns, and the company has been hand-screen- printing Arbre de Matisse ever since.
The print surrounds a dining room by Meg Braff in Sea Island, Georgia.
Photo by Tria Giovan.Baldwin deemed the fabric a “tour de force,” and it still claims many loyalists. Fashion designer Tory Burch, who calls it “my ideal jungle print,” used it in her New York City place, applying it, in blue, to walls, furniture, and the seats of her Saarinen Tulip chairs, a nod to the pattern-splashed living rooms of her child- hood. (Her mother had used the print decades before.) Meanwhile, singer-actress Daphne Guinness took a page from Baldwin’s book, too, sheathing a low-lying sofa in her Manhattan apartment in the brown-and-white colorway.
Patrick Mele covered a Connecticut guest bedroom with the enduring pattern.
Photo by Timothy Kolk.Decorator Patrick Mele praises Arbre de Matisse’s versatility: “It almost works like a solid.” He has papered a guest bedroom in Connecticut with it but dreams of an allover treatment. “Even though there’s a lot going on, I find it to be pretty soothing, pleasant, and calming.” quadrillefabrics.com
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