Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Wallpaper time warp

 
People really used to like wallpaper.

This lovely pattern was hidden behind shelves in our kitchen pantry. We were told by someone who used to live in the house that this used to be part of a breakfast nook. How could you not have a great day when you start it out eating your balanced breakfast looking at this sunny wallpaper?

This was hiding behind a built-in desk in the attic bedroom.
 
This subtle palette was found behind some shelves in the nursery.



3 comments:

  1. wow....just wow....but I have to admit to sort of loving the wallpaper in the former breakfast nook of the veggies. Did you happen to look into the closets at Bobs house at Christmas? Still haven't done the interior of them and it has a dusty pink rose wallpaper that makes me gag each time I open the door!

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  2. The nursery one is particularly charming.

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  3. I like the one in the middle a lot. In the first example, the colors match the graphic style of the period: I'm guessing 1967 or 1968. And with only a single color of ink, the bottom paper is hard to date. Designs like that have been produced since the early 19th century. But the second paper has my very favorite approach: where a design of one period is given a new life with a modern colorway--in this case, probably what was "modern" in the late 1940s. It's like having double vision and it lets you go in either direction with your room: the era of the paper or the era of the design. Or why not both at the same time?

    Anyway, thanks for sharing. I always suggest to people who uncover earlier wallpapers in the course of remodeling--especially if the same work that revealed the papers will ultimately destroy them--that they take an evenly-lit close-up of the largest repeat that's in decent condition, then a close up of the individual elements. Who knows whether or not our discovery is a paper that's otherwise lost to design history. With today's cameras, everybody can be an archaeologist, and without ever leaving home. Just an hour ago, prompted by this very post (thank you for the push)--I installed the first-ever exhibit in the Main Gallery of the Period Wallpaper Preservation Society (PWPS) also known as a new board over on my Pinterest page. We all gotta start somewhere.

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