Traditionally, wallpapers have imitated more expensive materials, such as architectural details, painted wall decorations, wood grains, marble, and, most often, textiles. In the mid-18th century when wallpapered rooms became a prevailing fashion in England and France, wallpaper borders were as important a decorative element as the coverings themselves. A brilliant swag of printed paper flowers,...

This French sidewall is machine-printed on a neutral ground and depicts a pastoral scene framed by leaves and vines. This type of wallpaper, called a “landscape figure,” originated in France and was extremely popular during the early nineteenth century. These formulaic patterns were composed of rows of two or three repeating vignettes with pastoral or...

This wallpaper manufactured by Wallace Wall-Paper Co. is dated 1906-08. Although it is machine-printed on paper, the vertical thread-like lines make it look like a woven textile. A variety of textiles have been used to cover walls, so it is not surprising that the earliest and consistent influence on wallpaper design has come from textiles....

This sidewall was designed by an Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi. Throughout Kuniyoshi’s prolific career, he worked in a variety of different media, including painting, photography, and printmaking. His painterly works from the 1920s are characterized by an expressive distortion of form, which was inspired by Kuniyoshi’s experience with traditional Japanese painting, as well as his...

This sidewall, manufactured by Ben Rose Inc., was made to cover the majority of the main wall area, between the chair rail and frieze. Groves was screen-printed in 1955, and depicts silhouettes of leafless trees. Screen-printing entails using a large mesh screen, with each separated design layer printed one after the other by hand on...

This neo-classical wallpaper frieze is a broad horizontal band meant to decorate a wall near the ceiling. I was immediately drawn to the three-dimensional quality of the block-print, as well as the intricate details that can be seen in the wings, imagery on the urn, and adornments on the confronted figures. The various Greek and...