GOLDEN HOUR: Sublime Wallcoverings Inspired by Gustav Klimt

Meet Emilie, our latest Klimt-inspired wallcovering collection.

THE WOMAN BEHIND THE KISS

In 1900 Vienna, Gustav Klimt layered translucent paint over gold leaf so that the metal shimmered through the color, almost as if the medium had an inner life force of its own. It was a city in the grip of profound upheaval — Freud was mapping the unconscious, and the effects were felt across every artistic discipline. Klimt wove it into his work in his own flavor of love and eroticism: fleshy figures and jewel-toned botanicals grounded in gilded geometries, a technique he borrowed from Japanese printmaking. His poppies were never simply botanical. They were symbols of beauty's transience, of passion that blooms only briefly but leaves a profound mark on the psyche.

Of all who moved through that world, none captivated him more than Emilie Louise Flöge — fashion designer, feminist, and his muse, immortalized in The Kiss.

EMILIE

Aptly named for the muse herself, Emilie is layered in translucent colors over authentic gold leaf, the stylized, almost abstract florals applied to the backing by hand with delicate metal sheets. The effect is nothing short of psychological: metal glistens through and shifts as light moves across it throughout the day, from warm, to luminous, to molten. Emilie doesn't recede into the wall, it glows within it.

Available in five colorways — Superbloom, Peony, Marigold, Ruby, and Twilight — on real gold leaf or Type II gold Mylar.

More on Klimt and his gold, from the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

THE ROOM, NOT THE STAGE

A Vienna 1900 playlist

Before the gold, Klimt painted theaters. His first major commission was ten ceiling panels for the staircases of Vienna's new Burgtheater — scenes tracing the history of the stage from the Greeks onward, finished in 1888. He put himself in one of them. His only painted self-portrait sits sixty feet above the staircase, in the audience at Shakespeare's Globe, watching Romeo and Juliet with his brother beside him.

So this playlist is what filled the rooms he decorated: Mahler's decade running the Court Opera, Strauss's Salome scandalizing the censors, Zemlinsky, early Schoenberg, and a few waltzes for the ballrooms where his portrait sitters actually danced. Freud was a short walk away, taking notes.