A panoply of wallpaper

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2000 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

During the latter half of the nineteenth century the production of wallpaper in the United States increased dramatically thanks to new printing technologies that enabled printers to manufacture them relatively inexpensively at prices at least competitive with, or lower than, those of imported papers. Lower prices brought wallpaper from the purview of the elite to the realm of the middle class. Kitchens, closets, attic staircases, and even ceilings were often embellished with a variety of papers in addition to the more traditional rooms, such as parlors, dining rooms, and bedrooms. Periodicals proliferated at this time, and since many of them were targeted to women they contained abundant information and advice on home decoration. For wallpaper, their writers and editors endorsed what was currently popular in England, first highly colored and patterned Victorian papers and later the designs of the highly regarded designer William Morris. His designs for densely arranged, highly stylized floral patterns eventu ally gave way to those that featured more botanically accurate representations of flowers (many of them roses) in more open designs.

Around the beginning of the twentieth century wallpaper manufacturers began to market their products by issuing sample books, with some large firms producing two a year, while smaller manufacturers issued promotional brochures and leaflets containing their latest designs. Sample books survive in museum archives, but because they were frequently handled and exposed to light, the colors of the papers have faded.

In 1977 an extraordinary cache of more than 4,500 rolls of wallpaper representing some 1,377 patterns was discovered by members of the Brillion Historical Society in Brillion, Wisconsin. The papers had never been unrolled and therefore retained their original coloring. The hoard included papers for walls, borders, and ceilings that were manufactured in the United States. They ranged in date from about 1850 to about 1915, and included examples produced in the rococo and Renaissance revival styles as well as more rectilinear and geometric patterns that embody the arts and crafts aesthetic. The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, which houses our nation's largest collection of wallpapers, sent members of its curatorial and archival staffs to Wisconsin to view the collection, and they recommended that the museum purchase samples of each paper. Samples were also purchased by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The firm Victorian Collectibles in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, offers reproductions of more than one hundred examples from the Brillion collection. Among the historic houses and institutions they have supplied with wallpaper are the Edison Institute of the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; the Kentucky Historical Society in Frankfort; and Avery House in Fort Collins, Colorado. The patterns they offer may be viewed on their Web site (www.victorianwallpaper.com). The firm may be contacted by telephone at 800-783-3829, or by fax at 414-352-7290.