Article Review by Wallpaper Scholar
The story of the royal family's dwindling fortunes during the French Revolution is a gripping one. It becomes more personal by learning why wallpaper was chosen to decorate the empty apartments of the Tuileries in Paris after the family was forced to abandon Versailles. Read More... |
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The images on this page show the wallpaper covers for two 19th century almanacs. (One of the little books is missing its back cover). The wallpaper is stitched onto the 5" x 7" books with thread. One is the "New England Farmer's Almanac for 1825", by Dudley Leavitt, published by Moore, and the other is "The Farmer's Almanac for 1826", by Robert B. Thomas, published by Richardson and Lord.
They are blockprinted in four colors on a laid paper. There is no
ground. The color which reads "white" is actually just the ground of the paper. There are highlights of an opaque white color around the details.
This is an example of a "blank" (a wallpaper printed on ungrounded paper), though I'm not sure exactly when that term came into general use. It may have cost between 25 and 50 cents per piece, which would have been the 8 yard piece. 1825 was not yet the era of really cheap paper, that would come a generation later, with the development of mechanized printing. The maker is not known but it may have been Bumstead or another Boston paperstainer, or maybe John Perkins in
Providence.
There is something (maybe the stars?) about this scrolly, foliated and rather awkward design which suggests very strongly "I am an early American paper". This is the type of paper that one would expect to see in the background of a group portrait by a non-academic painter, showing a dour-faced family in a farmhouse parlor.
I belive it was Father Flanagan who said "there is no such thing as a bad boy". Similarly, we believe there is no such thing as a "bad" wallpaper. All wallpaper is beautiful because it was always a personal choice, and it always served a purpose. This is the type of wallpaper, and information, that we specialize in at WallpaperScholar.Com, I suppose you could call it the technical end.
So, welcome!
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