I find these hanging baskets rather a novel idea in home decoration. These are used in place of the wide friezes that became popular in the very late years of the nineteenth century. Wide friezes were printed on the paper in a horizontal fashion, which makes perfect sense as that is how they were hung. These ornamental devices are printed in a vertical fashion, same as a wallpaper, which caused some confusion when I first came across them. These are designed to be cut apart between motifs and then pasted on the wall in a horizontal fashion with the ribbon forming a continuous horizontal stripe. The difference between these ornaments and a frieze is that the frieze runs continuously around the room with no break in the pattern. These floral ornaments allow a break in the design and have a more delicate appearance.

You will notice there is a stripe pattern printed behind the floral ornament; this would be the same pattern as the wallpaper. The stripe wallpaper would be hung first with the floral paper being hung on top, matching up the stripes. Which is also the reason the design is printed vertically as it was more cost effective to just add a few more rollers to print the bouquets over the existing wallpaper design.

Another trend that was probably inspired by these ornaments were cut-out borders. These were printed in a horizontal format with a continuous design and were perforated along the bottom edge making it easy to separate the border. I believe these perforation machines were invented, or first used on wallpaper, around 1905-07. It would be very difficult to cut out this basket motif with scissors or a blade which explains why the background pattern continues onto the wallpaper. The cut-out borders could be applied over any coordinating wallpaper.

One thought on “Hanging Floral Baskets You Don’t Need to Water

What a treat to see these beautifully developed designs.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *