In celebration of National Design Month, October’s Object of The Week posts honor past National Design Award winners. This post was originally published on July 9, 2017. This wallpaper by Geoff McFetridge somewhat resembles a circuit board with its minimal rendering of visual elements, but the title, “Lines Forrest,” clearly sets the record straight that...
This post was originally published on June 1, 2016. Charles Burchfield is one of the best known American watercolorists of the twentieth century, painting urban street scenes as well as more rural landscapes in a rather sullen fashion. It is less well known that he designed wallpaper, working for the M. H. Birge and Sons...
Welcome to the Object of the Week blog. This March, in celebration of Women’s History Month, each Monday a new post will highlight women designers in the collection. This wallpaper called Transportation traces the history of the railroad from 1830 to about 1938. The designer, Mary Louise Leake, was inspired to create this design after...
For the past couple days, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a French scholar doing research on the Parisian wallpaper manufacturer Jules Desfosse and later, Desfosse & Karth. We went through the museum holdings of wallpapers by this design firm and saw some really beautiful pieces. Jardin d’Hiver stands out as one of the...
This post was originally published on August 16, 2014. The Curwen Press got its start in east London in 1863 as a music publisher. The scope of the business expanded and in 1920 began including book publishing and artist prints. It was at this time that the Curwen Press made contact with the Royal College...
A colorful design to brighten your day! Kinetics is a mural design from the Kaleidoscope collection of murals and supergraphics by James Seeman. Resembling a colorized barcode, the design may have been inspired by this emerging technology. Patented in the United States in 1951, it took about twenty years for the barcode to become commercially...
The Golden Age is a delightful wallpaper designed by Walter Crane in 1887 and printed by Jeffrey & Co. in London as part of their Victorian Wall-Paper collection. The design contains two winged putti, standing on a large foliate swag, supporting or carrying a large basket of fruit. There are two large birds, maybe cockatoos,...
This is one of the most gorgeous and dramatic wallpapers produced during the early twentieth century. The design shows a brilliantly colored peacock perched in a cedar tree, with copious blossoms of lilac and wisteria in yellow and lavender. All of the printed colors pop against the black ground. And note the size of the...
This is an arabesque wallpaper design from the late eighteenth century, containing two alternating views. The top view shows a woman, possibly Venus, within an arbor seated on a cross frame stool, playfully bouncing a putto, perhaps Cupid, on her foot. A tall urn sits behind her. A tree grows off to the left, towering...
This post was originally published January 18, 2013 and is being reposted in a belated commemoration of A.A. Milne’s birthday and the creation of this wonderful story and its beloved characters. This children’s frieze captures the adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin. This is a woodblock print and was produced within a year...
Author: Anne Regan This pop-culture inspired cocktail paper from the post-World War II era immediately evokes images of the model 1950s suburban home. Its imagery—mostly items used within the kitchen like fruits, coffee, cocktail drinks, and even poultry—reference a variety of trends in 1950s America. The chickens and roosters are representative of fertile animals, a...
Here is a wallpaper that is quite beautiful though difficult to describe. Rather atmospheric in effect, kind of a blend of crashing waves and tie-dye. If you start looking at the details there appears to be a scrolling acanthus motif which can be seen in the lower right, with a mirror image of this in...
This is an exquisitely printed wallpaper illustrating the Thousand and One Nights tale. The story is told through a series of five frames or portals, each of which alternates with a smaller frame which remains constant. Each of the scenes is printed in brilliant colors with an ombre sky that shades from orange to blue....
This is a pillar and arch paper, the format of which was introduced in England in the late eighteenth century. These papers consisted of a series of pillars and arches, with any variety of motifs used to occupy the space under the arch. The scale and repeat size was usually quite large so these designs...
Wallpapers have a long history of celebrating innovations in technology, especially when it involves mobility. Early steam-powered locomotives and paddle boats, automobiles and airplanes are frequent themes. Feats of civil engineering including the Brooklyn Bridge are also highlighted. Here is a wallpaper celebrating industrial progress. This paper is commemorating the Exposition Universelle of 1855, the...
