Leather wallpaper

Though there were craftsmen in several cities (such as Antwerp, Brussels, and Ghent), the major handicraft center for gold leather was Mechelen, where it was mentioned as early as 1504.

One of them, Hans le Maire, because of the smell, the need for water, wind and light, working at the edge of the city[3] or in Vreeland,[4] used up to 16,000 hides of calves and some 170,000 leaves of silver annually.

The last Amsterdam gold leather merchant Willem van den Heuvel closed around 1680, but the trade and production continued in Flanders and Northern France.

With the advent of printed wallpaper from about 1650, often imported from China as well as made in Europe, the far more expensive leather wallcoverings began to decline, though they continued to be used, in a rather revivalist sprit, in very luxurious homes.

[6] During the colonial period in the United States, embossed leather panels were occasionally used as an accent, as a dado, on a screen, or above a chimney.

They included embossing, gild and painted finishes designed to imitate leather wallpaper and were used to line furniture and cabinets.

The technique consisted of shaping panels of wet leather over wooden moulds, then painting them, then oil-gilding and lacquering them.

Patterns for these panels followed fashions in silk damask, at some lag in time, since the high-relief wooden moulds were laborious to make.

After the second half of the 18th century, this luxurious artisan product was no longer made,[8] its place taken in part by chintz hangings and printed wallpapers.