A vast wallpaper archive

Magazine Antiques, April, 2001 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City, the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London have the largest collections of wallpapers in the world. On April 24, the Cooper-Hewitt is opening an exhibition of eighty wallpapers drawn from its collection, which today comprises some ten thousand examples of panels and fragments made all over the world during the last three hundred years. The lion's share of these comes from England, France, and the United States. The firm Brunschwig et Fils, one of the sponsors of the exhibition, has a partnership with the Cooper-Hewitt to manufacture reproductions of wallpapers from its archives. It has recently added eight papers and three borders to the line of reproductions it has already produced. Each reproduction has been given a pattern name.

Among the new offerings is Clematis Panel, a French or English wallpaper of the Victorian period that can only be produced in twelve-foot-long panels. Gloucester (illustrated at top left) is based on an American block-printed paper of about 1830. Of about the same date is Irise Damask, a block-printed reproduction of an original made in France or the United States. Its name refers to a complex technique in which the back-ground appears almost striped through a subtle gradation of colors. An arabesque pattern, popular in the late eighteenth century has been reproduced from a French example made about 1784 and is called Le Bain de Paon. Walter Crane, the English illustrator, was originally responsible for the design Brunschwig has named Tile Tales (illustrated above), which is drawn from one of his illustrations and dates to 1877.

Brunschwig has a similar arrangement with the Cooper-Hewitt that permits it to reproduce fabrics from the museum's extensive archive of more than thirty thousand pieces created over the course of some two thousand years. Many of the wallpapers cited above have matching fabrics. To those fabrics already in the line Brunschwig has now added thirteen printed and twenty-four woven examples. Fiona (illustrated at bottom right) is reproduced from a copperplate-printed English cotton of the late eighteenth century Toiles were popular French products and Parc de Vincennes (illustrated at bottom left) is based on a copperplate-printed example that dates to 1805.

Brunschwig et Fils is headquartered in New York City and has showrooms throughout the country open to the trade only. To learn where these are located, readers should telephone 212-838-7878.