One of the first lessons any of my employees gets is
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a pattern”.
This rule of thumb holds true in many situations and it helps to spot oddities and find things that do not fit among big bundles of data. It is a rule I have internalised a long time ago and that runs in the back of my mind at all times, so it is not surprising that my “Three times is a pattern” alarm suddenly went off during TEH.
It is the third time we see the flat of a woman that is somewhat close to Sherlock (I do not count Kitty Riley in this) and the third time this woman has a wallpaper with birds on it. Coincidence? The universe – or in our case Arwel Wyn Jones – is rarely that lazy. We are talking about a man who puts glass skulls in the background of a scene and pins phoenixes on walls that remain invisible. Just because he can.
So where do we see birds on wallpaper? I do not count the walls at the wedding since they are technically a mural and not wallpaper.
The first person we see near bird wallpaper is Mrs Hudson. On the walls outside 221A we see finches.
This fits with her image. She’s a little old lady. Harmless. Like a finch. Just your garden variety landlady-not-housekeeper. That’s what she broadcasts to the outside world (hence the finches are outside her flat). We learn that this is not quite true when we see her through Magnussen’s eyes.
The second bird wallpaper we see is in Irene Adler’s bathroom. Mind you, it is not her private bedroom. This bedroom is her workplace. This bathroom is directly attached to her workplace but it is slightly hidden away.
I do not know enough about birds to be sure what kind of bird it is but If I had to guess I’d say it is a Chinese bird of paradise. Which is a good fit for Irene. Her sitting room is very respectable, like Irene in public in her impeccable outfits. The bedroom gets the Devil Damask treatment which is again a good fit for a dominatrix. Yet when all layers are away she is still an exotic bird. The naked woman Sherlock Holmes could not figure out. A very exotic specimen indeed.
We had coincidence, we had happenstance but for a pattern we need three instances, so what is number three?
It’s the wallpaper in Mary and John’s bedroom.
So what about that wallpaper? Especially in the colourway that Arwel has chosen for his set, the birds evoke parrots. A wall full of colourful parrots. What do parrots do? They repeat words and phrases.
What does Mary do when we first see her in front of this wallpaper? (gif borrowed from amygloriousponds)
She repeats a sentence she must have heard someone else say. Other people have pointed out the striking similarities between Mary’s and Magnussen’s phrases.
Mary parrots a phrase she clearly must have heard someone else say, while sitting in front of a wall of parrots – a wallpaper pattern that is not that good a choice for a bedroom. It is entirely too busy, people usually want a calm and relaxing room, not such a busy wall full of birds. This is a very interesting turnout indeed.
Arwel Wyn Jones knows his wallpaper.
Arwel choosing the parrot wallpaper for this room is – on the surface – very odd. This is not a pattern that is appropriate for a bedroom. If the pattern had only been chosen with its effect on camera in mind, there would have been countless other choices that would have worked better in the context of a bedroom.
(Trust me on that. In the last 16 months I have read more than two dozen monographies on the history of wallpaper design and usage. On top of that I have looked at roughly a million wallpaper pattern swatches. Yes you have read correctly. One million swatches. No, I am not kidding. It was all for science. And the masterpost)
So when I say that he could have chosen dozens of other spectacular patterns that are currently on the market, but went for one that is not only slightly off within the context it is being presented in, but that simultaneously fits into a meta-narrative pattern.
“The flat of any woman that is of importance to Sherlock has wallpaper with birds on it and those birds make a statement about her personality”.
Going with that pattern I would not be surprised to find something like this somewhere near Mummy Holmes next time:
Well, there’s a sound reason why this happens, in the story: it’s a way to cut to the next scene. John goes to Baker Street and we will see him walk by this wallpaper,
It does, however, like other editing techniques in TST, make it look like this is Sherlock’s dream or imagination, doesn’t it?
The idea that Sherlock has been at Baker Street, ‘this whole time’, is certainly been strong since TAB,
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