Witold Gordon was a Polish-born artist perhaps best known for his illustrations of regional architecture and typography, which were shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the exhibition “American Scene” in 1941. New York’s idiosyncratic storefronts were the inspiration for a series of New Yorker covers in the 1940s. Shell Chest was Gordon’s...

In the 1950s it was popular to hang themed wallpapers in functional spaces. Designs were produced for the kitchen and dining room that depicted food and drink, for children’s bedrooms that showed toys, cartoons and fairytale characters, and even designs featuring objects such as irons and scissors were made to be hung in spaces where...