CURRICULUM VITAE: AN INQUIRY INTO NINETEENTH CENTURY WALLPAPERS USED IN AMERICAN HOUSES
CURRICULUM VITAE: AN INQUIRY INTO NINETEENTH CENTURY WALLPAPERS USED IN AMERICAN HOUSES
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Issue Date
1978
Authors
Rich, Katharine Harsell
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Abstract
Wallpaper is one of the decorative arts of relatively recent date. The earliest known piece is a sixteenth-century fragment dated (by the printing on its reverse) in the reign of Henry VIII. This "Cambridge fragment," found in 1911 in Christ's College, Cambridge, England, has been reconstructed by modern science to show its pomegranate design. For several centuries, members of the craft guilds in England and on the continent manufactured wallpaper with woodblocks, using distemper colors, and a simple flatbed press. These products were very small in size, but for use as wallpaper these separate woodblock prints had to be glued together in large sections either before or after printing. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, machinework replaced handwork, and in the decorative art of wallpaper, its manufacturers, rather than designers, became leaders. A landmark in technology, for example, is the cylinder press, which radically changed both production methods and products. 'Endless" rolls of paper made possible the lengths of wallpaper we know today. Other related changes affecting wallpaper production came from the infant science of chemistry, as inks of different colors and properties were developed for polychromatic printing presses.
Description
"SUBMITTED TO THE MUSEUM ART RESEARCH FOCUS OF THE MUSEUM STUDIES PROGRAM AND THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF LONE MOUNTAIN COLLEGE"