Delivered in partnership with Calico Wallpaper.
In the press: Lee Broom, “Lee Broom x Calico Wallpaper present Overture” · Lee Broom, Trio of Design, LDF 2025 · ICON Magazine · CC Magazine
At a glance
- In partnership with: Calico Wallpaper, Brooklyn, with Lee Broom
- Event: London Design Festival 2025, Trio of Design, Lee Broom’s Shoreditch flagship, 16–21 September 2025
- Collection: Overture, Lee Broom’s first-ever wallpaper (installed design: Matinee)
- Our work:
- survey and measurements for Calico’s layout
- wall preparation
- installation of the mural across a side wall and a back wall with a concealed door
- wallpapered theatrical flats for Calico’s LDF dinner
- Dates: surveyed July 2025; installed 9 September 2025
The collection
Overture grew out of Lee Broom’s childhood as a child actor and his fascination with theatre drapery: “the huge draped curtains with painted backdrops” and sets that played tricks with perspective. The wallpaper is a trompe-l’oeil curtain that turns a flat wall into a stage. First shown in New York, it was “reimagined for the London audience” in one of three rooms of Lee Broom’s Rivington Street showroom.
Our approach
- Measured for a bespoke layout. We surveyed the room in July 2025 and supplied the dimensions from which Calico drew the panel layout. Overture is made to measure, so the folds of the curtain fall exactly where the room needs them.
- Wall preparation. The showroom walls were filled and sanded smooth. A drapery illusion only works if no real-world bump or ripple breaks the painted folds.
- Large-format panels, double cut. Calico’s fibre panels, about 68 cm wide, are hung with a bleed and double cut on the wall. That gives invisible seams through the soft gradients of the folds.
- Hiding the door. On the back wall the curtain runs straight across a flush door. The pattern is carried over it so that the door disappears into the drape.
The dinner flats
For Calico’s London Design Festival dinner the same September, we also papered freestanding theatrical flats in a set builder’s workshop on 15 September 2025, ready to be moved into the dining venue.
Outcome
From 16 to 21 September 2025, visitors to Shoreditch Design Triangle walked into a room that appeared to be draped in theatre curtains.
