Wallpaper
Less well-off members of the elite, unable to buy tapestries due either to prices or wars preventing international trade, turned to wallpaper to brighten up their rooms.
This measured a colossal 3.57 by 2.95 metres (11.7 by 9.7 ft), made up of 192 sheets, and was printed in a first edition of 700 copies, intended to be hung in palaces and, in particular, town halls, after hand-coloring.
In the 1760s the French manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon hired designers working in silk and tapestry to produce some of the most subtle and luxurious wallpaper ever made.
Hand-blocked wallpapers like these use hand-carved blocks and by the 18th century designs include panoramic views of antique architecture, exotic landscapes and pastoral subjects, as well as repeating patterns of stylized flowers, people and animals.
This ability to produce continuous lengths of wallpaper now offered the prospect of novel designs and nice tints being widely displayed in drawing rooms across Europe.
English, French and German manufacturers imitated it, usually beginning with a printed outline which was coloured in by hand, a technique sometimes also used in later Chinese papers.
Towards the end of the 18th century the fashion for scenic wallpaper revived in both America and France, leading to some enormous panoramas, like the 1804 20 strip wide panorama, Sauvages de la Mer du Pacifique (Savages of the Pacific), designed by the artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet for the French manufacturer Joseph Dufour et Cie showing the Voyages of Captain Cook.
Zuber et Cie's c. 1834 design Views of North America[5] hangs in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.
[1] In the United States: John Bellrose, Blanchard & Curry, Howell Brothers, Longstreth & Sons, Isaac Pugh in Philadelphia; Bigelow, Hayden & Co. in Massachusetts; Christy & Constant, A. Harwood, R. Prince in New York.
The development of steam-powered printing presses in Britain in 1813 allowed manufacturers to mass-produce wallpaper, reducing its price and so making it affordable to working-class people.
Wallpaper enjoyed a huge boom in popularity in the nineteenth century, seen as a cheap and very effective way of brightening up cramped and dark rooms in working-class areas.
It became almost the norm in most areas of middle-class homes, but remained relatively little used in public buildings and offices, with patterns generally being avoided in such locations.
[12] The development of digital printing allows designers to break the mould and combine new technology and art to bring wallpaper to a new level of popularity.
[13] Historical examples of wallpaper are preserved by cultural institutions such as the Deutsches Tapetenmuseum (Kassel) in Germany;[14] the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Paris) and Musée du Papier Peint (Rixheim) in France;[1] the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in the UK;[15] the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt,[16] Historic New England,[17] Metropolitan Museum of Art,[18] U.S. National Park Service,[19][20] and Winterthur[21] in the US.
Most wallpaper borders are sold by length and with a wide range of widths therefore surface area is not applicable, although some may require trimming.
Paper backed vinyls are generally more expensive, significantly more difficult to hang, and can be found in wider untrimmed widths.
Foil wallpaper generally has paper backing and can (exceptionally) be up to 36 inches (91 cm) wide, and be very difficult to handle and hang.
Textile wallpapers include silks, linens, grass cloths, strings, rattan, and actual impressed leaves.
Solid vinyl with a cloth backing is the most common commercial wallcovering [citation needed] and comes from the factory as untrimmed at 54 inches (140 cm) approximately, to be overlapped and double cut by the installer.
The wallpaper uses glass fibre reinforcement in several directions and a special adhesive which forms a strong bond with the masonry when dry.
Accurate room measurements (length, width, and height) along with number of window and door openings is essential for ordering wallpaper.
"[28] Besides conventional installation on interior walls and ceilings, wallpapers have been deployed as decorative covering for hatboxes, bandboxes, books, shelves, and window-shades.
