The Design, Production and Reception of Eighteenth-Century Wallpaper in Britain (The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950)

Wallpaper’s spread across trades, class and gender is charted in this first full-length study of the material’s use in Britain during the long eighteenth century. It examines the types of wallpaper that were designed and produced and the interior spaces it occupied, from the country house to the homes of prosperous townsfolk and gentry, showing that wallpaper was hung by Earls and merchants as well as by aristocratic women. Drawing on a wide range of little known examples of interior schemes and surviving wallpapers, together with unpublished evidence from archives including letters and bills, it charts wallpaper’s evolution across the century from cheap textile imitation to innovative new decorative material. Wallpaper’s growth is considered not in terms of chronology, but rather alongside the categories used by eighteenth-century tradesmen and consumers, from plains to flocks, from China papers to papier mâché and from stucco papers to materials for creating print rooms. It ends by assessing the ways in which eighteenth-century wallpaper was used to create historicist interiors in the twentieth century. Including a wide range of illustrations, many in colour, the book will be of interest to historians of material culture and design, scholars of art and architectural history as well as practicing designers and those interested in the historic interior. About the Author Clare Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Art History, The Open University. Tags: Nonfiction, art history, Architecture, Interior Design, Art & Architecture, General Art The Design, Production and Reception of Eighteenth-Century Wallpaper in Britain- Front Cover The Design, Production and Reception of Eighteenth-Century Wallpaper in Britain Title Page Copyright Page Contents List of figures List of plates Preface Introduction In search of paper hangings: visual and written evidence Interpretations of eighteenth-century wallpaper ‘Antipodes of design’ Recent approaches to wallpaper history Coming home: wallpaper and eighteenth-century material culture ‘Our new paperhangings’ Notes Chapter 1: ‘Paper Hangings for Rooms’: the arrival of wallpaper A new commodity: from concealment to the wall Wallpaper’s growth: imitation and gentility Design and workshop practice Notes Chapter 2: A contested trade Paper hangings manufacture: materials and techniques The organisation of the paper hangings trade Mapping supply Regulation and pricing strategies Preparation and hanging Trading networks Retailing and viewing paper hangings Consumption in town and country Notes Chapter 3: Imitation and the cross-cultural encounter: ‘India’ and ‘mock India’ papers, pictures and prints Acquiring and hanging India paper and India pictures India paper in the country house India pictures, plains and ‘pencilling’ India paper in the London house Mock India papers and pictures Notes Chapter 4: In search of propriety: flocks and plains Flocks and mock flocks: in search of colour, pattern and texture ‘Hanging and Colouring the Room’: plain papers Notes Chapter 5: Challenging the high arts: papier mâché, stucco papers and ‘landskip’ papers Papier mâché Stucco papers ‘Landskip, Ruins, Figures & C’: wallpapers depicting the‘Ruins of Rome’ Notes Chapter 6: ‘Our modern paper hangings’: in search of the fashionable and the new The print room French products, English names Metallic finishes Hanging ‘in the French manner’: the compartment Wallpapers imitating stone Arabesque schemes Notes Epilogue: ‘Pleasing decay’ – the rediscovery of eighteenth-century wallpapers Notes Appendix 1: List of principal wallpapered rooms discussed, c.1714–c.1795 Appendix 2: List of eighteenth-century London paper hangings tradesmen discussed Bibliography Abbreviations Manuscript collections Printed primary sources Secondary literature Index "Wallpaper's spread across trades, class and gender is charted in this first full-length study of the material's use in Britain during the long eighteenth century. It examines the types of wallpaper that were designed and produced and the interior spaces it occupied, from the country house to the homes of prosperous townsfolk and gentry, showing that wallpaper was hung by Earls and merchants as well as by aristocratic women. Drawing on a wide range of little known examples of interior schemes and surviving wallpapers, together with unpublished evidence from archives including letters and bills, it charts wallpaper's evolution across the century from cheap textile imitation to innovative new decorative material. Wallpaper's growth is considered not in terms of chronology, but rather alongside the categories used by eighteenth-century tradesmen and consumers, from plains to flocks, from China papers to papier mache and from stucco papers to materials for creating print rooms. It ends by assessing the ways in which eighteenth-century wallpaper was used to create historicist interiors in the twentieth century. Including a wide range of illustrations, many in colour, the book will be of interest to historians of material culture and design, scholars of art and architectural history as well as practicing designers and those interested in the historic interior"--Publishers' website Drawing on a wide range of little known examples of interior schemes and surviving wallpapers, together with unpublished evidence from archives including letters and bills, this book charts wallpaper's evolution across the century from cheap textile imitation to innovative new decorative material.