Aesthetic walls and ceilings

Magazine Antiques, May, 2003 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

One of the hallmarks of interior design during the time of the aesthetic movement was the concept of a room as a total work of art. This meant that everything from the color of the walls to the shape of a doorknob or the silk selected to make the tassels for trimming a curtain had to be not only beautiful but contribute to the aesthetic harmony of the interior. The talented designer Christian Herter created objects and interiors that relied on dense patterning for the interior decorating firm Herter Brothers. In her essay "Patronage and the British Interior" in Herter Brothers: Furniture and Interiors for a Gilded Age, Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen notes that seven distinct patterns comprise the painted ceilings and walls in the Board of Officers (now Clark) Room (one of the very few of the firm's interiors that survive, even in part) in the Seventh Regiment Armory in New York City.

Christian Herter received a patent for fourteen wallpaper designs in 1879, but not a single printed example survives, and the drawin gs he provided to the patent office are uncolored. However, colored prints of rooms the firm created for some of the most affluent individuals of the 1870s and 1880s demonstrate that many different patterns are visible on the textiles used for upholstery, curtains, and carpets, and the marquetry that embellished furniture.

In this period wallpapers were conceived as an ensemble of three parts: the paper used on the dado, the paper from the dado to ceiling border (known as fill), and the border, or frieze. Ceilings were also covered with wallpaper. The papers Herter patented fall into two categories: those that are strictly geometric and those that are inspired by nature, primarily plants.

Objects in the aesthetic style were once relegated to the trash heap, as their overblown decoration was considered anathema to modem eyes. Not so any more. These pieces are highly sought after and fetch high prices in the marketplace. Collectors who wanted to install their collections in rooms with an aesthetic movement decor had few places to locate appropriate wallpapers. Today the firm of Bradbury and Bradbury Art Wallpapers of Benicia, California, has taken the bold step of creating a set of handprinted wallpapers that draw on three sources: the Herter design patents, the painted designs stenciled onto ceilings, and the marquetry panels that adorn pieces of furniture made by the firm. They have made the set in four colorways that they have named Aesthetic Green, Pompeiian Red, Aesthetic Blue, and Jasper Green. These tones are based on colors known to have been popular in the period, and the results are very pleasing to the eye.

Bradbury and Bradbury's Web site (www.bradbury.com) has information on these Herter Brothers wallpapers, or one may order a catalogue by telephoning 707-746-1900.

Wallpapers inspired by the work of Herter Brothers and manufactured by Bradbury and Bradbury Art Wallpapers, Benicia, California. Left to right: Aesthetic Blue/Indigo wallpaper scheme consisting of a frieze (top), fill (middle), and dado (bottom). Ceiling element in Pompeiian/Burgundy. Fill in Aesthetic Green colorway.