Stuck on Beauty

 

18th-century paper 

QUESTION: While touring some historic houses, I’ve often marveled at the beautiful wallpapers on their interior walls. I’ve always loved wallpaper. In fact, every room in the house I grew up in had wallpaper on the walls. But getting it off was such a chore that many people turned to painted walls instead. I’d love to know how wallpaper originated and some of the history behind its use. Can you help me?

ANSWER: People have adorned their walls for centuries. During the Middle Ages, the wealthy hung woolen tapestries to help keep out the cold. Later, painted cloths came into fashion. And through the evolution of interior decoration—wallpaper. 

Early on, makers of wallpaper used the same wooden printing blocks used on textiles on heavy paper. Most likely its introduction to Europe occurred in the 16th century, following the Dutch trade with China and Japan. Dutch ships returned from the Far East with exotic decorated papers when they then exported to England and France. 

Hanging wallpaper sheet

The first wallpapers to appear in Europe were small, approximately 12 to 18 inches square and very expensive. Merchants used the earliest wallpapers to decorate the insides of cupboards and smaller rooms in their houses. 

Up until the late 18th century, creators of these small squares of wallpaper hand painted them. That made hanging the paper difficult because many times those smaller pieces didn’t join together very well. As a result, there were gaps, and designs and patterns didn’t meld together that well.

Others attached pieces to frames and let them hang freely. The dark, damp halls of chateaus and manor houses were usually drafty, so people placed these hanging papers where they might cut down on drafts that blew through the large open areas and hallways.

Ancient Roman scene in frame

Many early wallpapers featured stylized floral motifs and simple pictorial scenes copied from contemporary embroideries and other textiles. Makers printed them in monochrome, in black ink on small sheets of paper. It wasn’t until the mid-17th century that wallpaper makers joined the single sheets together to form long rolls, a development that also encouraged the production of larger repeats and the introduction of block-printing. In this process, printers engraved onto the surface of a rectangular wooden block. Then they inked the block with paint and placed it face down on the paper for printing. Polychrome patterns required the use of several blocks----one for every color. They printed each color separately along the length of the roll, which they then hung up to dry before the next color could be applied. “Pitch” pins on the corners of the blocks helped the printer to line up the design. The process was laborious and required considerable skill.

French wallpapers

A number of fine French wallpapers offered different themes than those of the classic English papers. Often, the French papers displayed floral patterns, and many rendered figures from history and literature, whereas the English wallpapers favored landscape and bucolic compositions.

When wallpaper arrived in Colonial America, it was much too expensive for many to afford. Rather than pay the expensive costs for the wallpaper, many continued to paint or stencil their walls. However, some people found the imitation French papers affordable and applied them to their walls in small pieces instead.

Out of proportion design

The floral designs and landscape scenes commonly found were sometimes primitive, with houses and trees out of proportion. The skill of the artist or paperhanger directly affected the appearance of wallpaper. The progression leading to those long rolls of wallpaper allowed people to decorate large expanses of wall space without dividing the areas into those small panels.

By the early 19th century, expensive, imported wallpapers decorated the walls of prominent New England homes. Those papers were of various designs and patterns, and some of them depicted scenes from Greek and Roman mythology. American historical scenes were also popular.

Block printing wallpaper

Up until 1840 all wallpaper makers employed the slow, labor intensive block printing process. So manufacturers wanted to find ways to speed up production. Potters & Ross, a cotton printing firm based in Darwen, Lancashire, England, patented the first wallpaper printing machine in 1839. Adapting the methods used in the printing of calico fabric, the paper passed over the surface of a large cylindrical drum and received an impression of the pattern from a number of rollers arranged around its base. Troughs beneath each one simultaneously inked the rollers with colors. The first machine-printed papers appeared thin and colorless beside the richer and more complex effects of block-printing and most had simple floral and geometric designs with small repeats.

Wallpaper evolved into an art form. One example depicted the Scottish Highlands, complete with sportsmen stalking deer. Another showed a scene of Italian peasants dancing and harvesting grapes. And yet another depicted riders leaping fences.

Historic panorama scene wallpaper

Victorian wallpaper floral

The frieze-filling-dado wallpaper scheme highlights the popularity of wallpaper in Victorian homes. In 1868 as a way of breaking up the monotony of a single pattern on the wall, and by 1880 it was a standard feature in many fashionable interiors. The dado paper covered the lower part of the wall, between the skirting board and chair rail; above this hung the filling, and above this the frieze. And as if three different wallpapers weren’t enough decoration for any room, the scheme was often combined with ceiling papers to complete the densely-patterned effects. Ideally, the frieze should have been light and lively, the filling, a retiring, all-over pattern, and the dado should be darker to withstand dirt and wear and tear. Co-ordinating papers, printed in muted greens, reds, yellows and golds, could be extremely attractive but the frieze-filling-dado-ceiling combination often led to visual overload. Hallways and stairs benefitted best from this wallpaper treatment. But by 1900 ceiling papers had disappeared and, in artistic interiors, wide friezes hung above plain or simple paneled walls.

Antique wallpapers are of interest to several kinds of collectors. Some might be interested in specific themes or designs, such as papers depicting historical scenes, or those displaying floral patterns; wallpapers from England or France or some other country might engage the attention of others; still, some individuals like to collect papers produced by certain manufacturers, such as Cole & Son or William Morris. And some of  those assembling a collection might be interested in a certain time period such as wallpapers manufactured in the 17th or 18th century.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about railroad antiques in "All Aboard!" in the 2021 Summer Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Idealized Scenes from Life

QUESTION: I’ve grown to love the scenes on English transferware. I’ve got a small collection that I add to from time to time. How did the makers of these wares know what sort of scenes to use to decorate their wares? Were they trying to illustrate stories or myths? Nearly all of the scenes on my pieces are rural. Is there a reason for that?

ANSWER: These are all good questions. The Victorians had a method to their madness, as the old saying goes. As it turns out, the scenes on your Staffordshire transferware pieces were a direct result of historic events and the lifestyles that people led at the time.

During the 19th century, Victorians began exploring the world around them.  Technological advances enabled them to make more ambitious voyages of discovery. And as they journeyed farther from home, their views of the natural world changed. This changing perspective reflected in the decorations of 19th-century ceramics ranging from early historical and romantic Staffordshire transfer printed wares to late 19th-century majolica. Idealized wilderness and pastoral scenes could be found on all types of vessels and dishes.

By this time Americans had begun to develop a different view of the land. To the Puritans, wilderness had been considered a land of devils and demons, a domain to be feared. But the Victorians reveled in the beauty of nature.

The American frontier had been pushed westward. Following this trend, Staffordshire potteries began producing transfer printed landscapes illustrating the popular, romantic ideal of nature. Favorite spots such as Niagara Falls and Newport, Rhode Island, began to accommodate sightseers. And the Romantic Movement of the first half of the 19th century influenced the images on ceramics, from country scenes to floral motifs.

The Victorians developed a passion for natural history. They chronicled what they found in journals--the world's flora, fauna, and sea life—and created museums for their discoveries, erecting home conservatories, and published illustrated volumes on the natural sciences. Staffordshire artists thumbed through botany texts and visited botanical gardens and zoos, sketch-pads in hand, for inspiration. Some of this fascination may be seen in the border designs created by several of the potters of  Staffordshire wares and the floral motifs seen in Flow Blue.

Another reason for the popularity of a romanticized image of woodlands, mountains, sandy shores, and even idyllically situated American towns may be traced to the actual dirtiness and difficulty of life in both rural and urban landscapes.

Scenes on dinnerware were pristine by comparison. Several of the city views do show cattle and sheep in the foreground, but the cleanliness even of those scenes provided at least temporary escape from the dirtiness of the real world.

Another result of the Victorians’ fascination with nature, plus the Victorians’ obsession with death, was the Garden Cemetery Movement, born in Boston. In 1832, a group created the Auburn Cemetery, a large rural cemetery in rolling countryside with plenty of room for adequate burials. The site was also far enough away from the city to make grave robbery difficult. They adorned the  garden cemetery landscape with sculptures and artful groupings of trees and flowers to combine a necessity for more burial land with a desire to revel in nature.

The sylvan burial plots brought families to the large, rural cemeteries on picnics. Young couples took long strolls and individuals wandered among sepulchers and statuary to seek out moral lessons and inspiration. In essence, the new cemeteries became the first American public parks—places to commune both with nature and the dearly departed.

This combination of movements explains several unusual historical Staffordshire prints. Neither George Washington nor Benjamin Franklin would have ever expected anyone to spend time ruminating over his grave. Yet Enoch Wood & Son in both the illustrations of “Franklin's Tomb” and `Washington's Tomb” depict General Lafayette reclining by urn-capped tombs drawing inspiration from the resting places of his departed allies. Edward and George Phillips, two other noted artists of the time, show a young couple gazing at a tomb in an open glade in their print “Franklin.” This example appeared on a handless tea cup. Enoch Wood & Sons produced the most unusual print and the one that illustrates romantic death, titled “Washington Standing by His Own Tomb With a Scroll in His Hand.”

So the illustrations on pieces of Staffordshire aren’t random but related to the everyday lives of the people who used those dishes and other ceramic vessels.

Learn more about the Victorian obsession with death by reading "When Death Came A-Calling" in The Antiques Almanac.

Curator or Caretaker–Which are You?

QUESTION: I own a necklace of pure scrimshaw about 40 years old that was passed to my mother, and she gave it to me when she died. Can you tell me its value? 

ANSWER: Here’s a good example of an object that has been passed down from mother to daughter over several generations. But the person makes no mention of obtaining any more pieces of scrimshaw. Unfortunately, this often happens when people inherit an object or a collection from their relatives.

It seems that this person has taken over the job of acting caretaker for this piece of scrimshaw. While there’s nothing wrong in that, she’s missing out on the joy of collecting–the search for other pieces and buying the ones that she likes. But she shouldn’t feel bad. This is more often the case than not.

A caretaker, as the name suggests, cares for an object or a collection. This care usually consists of maintaining the condition of the object, and, of course, finding out how much the object is worth.

A curator, on the other hand, is someone who catalogs and maintains historic or artistic collections. This usually entails the maintenance of the objects and their general protection from damage. The curator also finds out as much as possible about the objects in the collection and, using a number of reliable resources, determines their value. In addition, the curator adds to the collection, refining it by selling off inferior pieces and arranging for the purchase of better ones. In essence, the curator becomes a collector.

So which are you–curator or caretaker? If you’ve been acting as a caretaker, why not change roles and actively get involved in learning all you can about and growing your inherited collection. You don’t know how much fun you’re missing.