The Enchanted Castle

by E. Nesbit

illustrations by
Paul O. Zelinsky





Morrow Junior Books, 1992

The genre of story in which magic happens to ordinary children in an ordinary world (as in Harry Potter) was the invention of this witty british author, universally admired in her native England and sadly underappreciated in the United States. When Noel Porter died, there was a copy of The Enchanted Castle on his bedside table.

In this classic book, three young siblings on school holiday meet the daughter of a mansion's caretaker. She shows them a paneled room where panels retract, revealing shelves full of opulent treasures. But on one shelf is a collection of strange, dull objects, including a ring that turns out to be imbued with magic; it grants wishes, but with unanticipated and increasingly disturbing consequences. Nesbit's stupendous imagination was like no other.

The illustrations are full-page watercolors, one per chapter.

This book is out of print, but its endpaper lives on!
First, Paul had the design of nine elegant shelves of treasures copied onto fabric and made into a vest. And now it is a repeating pattern on the website called Spoonflower, where it is available printed on a large choice of fabrics, and also made into any number of household items such as pillow covers, kitchen towels, or tablecloths. But perhaps the most special use of this elegant image is as wallpaper.



On Spoonflower.com, this pattern is represented in several sizes, in order to accomodate the width of the rolls of wallpaper. To fit the entire repeating pattern (the image above, but without the decorative wood at the bottom) on a roll (at 24" wide) would make it too small to look natural on a wall. So at the smallest acceptable scale, it's printed sideways, which allows for all three shelves of the pattern to fit on one strip of wallpaper, but which would also make the hanging process more difficult, if not impossible. At the most natural-feeling scale, it's necessary to use two rolls, an A and a B, that together align to create this elegant arrangement of treasures on blue velvet shelves. At the largest scale, each single shelf compartment spans the full width of the 24" wallpaper roll. Adjacent rolls would be mounted in a staggered arrangement, creating the full design seen here (instead of having each specific shelf repeat in a horizontal line).

 

Paul has uploaded quite a few patterns on Spoonflower, almost all of them relating to specific books. It's fun to browse through this website.