Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — The Beatles, 1967. Inner gatefold photograph by Michael Cooper, framed with both sides of the record. The living area, above the sofa.

The framed piece above the sofa is not the front cover. It is the inner gatefold — the photograph that appeared when you opened the record: four men in satin uniforms against a flat yellow field, looking straight out. It was shot by Michael Cooper in 1967. Both sides of the disc are mounted either side of it.

Why the inside, not the cover

The gatefold format was part of what made the album feel new. Sleeves before it were a front, a back and a spine. This one opened, and opening it was the point: you sat down with it. Framing the inside rather than the outside is a small correction of what people usually hang. The famous crowd scene is on every poster shop wall; this is the picture the people who actually bought the record spent time with.

Mounting both sides of the disc is a liberty, since it was a single album. We did it for the symmetry — two black circles against the rectangle — and because the label print is worth seeing. The mat was cut to hold those three shapes in a fixed relationship, and the frame is deep enough that the shadow moves across it during the day.

Why above the sofa

It faces the breakfast counter, which means the four of them are more or less in the room. That was deliberate. The living area is where guests talk, pour a drink and sit with a coffee, and a picture of four people looking back at you is better company in that room than a landscape would be.

It is the counterweight to the Pink Floyd prism above the bed. One is colour, company and daylight; the other is black, solitude and the end of the evening. Both come from the same few years, and between them they cover most of what people actually do in an apartment.