China Seas Fabric: Arbre De Matisse Reverse - Cadet Blue on Tinted Linen / Cotton

China Seas Fabric: Arbre de Matisse Reverse - Custom Cadet Blue on 100% Linen

In the early 1960s, Jay Hyde Crawford — founder of Quadrille, veteran of the kind of design education that required you to actually look at things — was looking at a Matisse drawing. What he saw was a tree that was not trying to be a tree. It was trying to be the idea of a tree: the gesture, the reach, the negative space between branches that tells you more about light than the branches themselves.

He drew it. It became Arbre de Matisse.

This colorway is Custom Cadet Blue — a blue not worn by any actual cadet, not taught at any military academy, not regulation anything. Somewhere between Windsor and winter sky, between uniform and rebellion. A custom mix, which means it exists in this lot and nowhere else. The next person who wants this exact color will be told no.

The ground is Belgian linen / cotton. The repeat is 20½ by 25½ inches, which is large enough to let the tree breathe.

Reverse means the figure and ground have traded places. What was solid is now open. What was pattern is now space. The tree is still reaching — but now you see what it's reaching through.

Matisse did not design fabric. Crawford did. But Matisse showed him where to look.

Please note that colors may not represent accurately in photo. Additional photo(s) provided to show scale, not colorway. All sales are final, and we do not send cuttings for approval.