In celebration of Women’s History Month, March Object of the Day posts highlight women designers in the collection. This wallpaper delights with its lively motifs of birds and plants and playful stylization. The bright colors and presence of nature injects an otherwise strongly geometric and simplified rendition of an urban landscape with a cheerful energy....
This paper has a decidedly modern look with the minimalist landscape seen through the arch. The view is bordering on surreal, centering on the ruins of a colonnade, with strong horizontal shadows going off to the right. Two trees are seen in the distance, with a flock of gulls or pigeons, which I initially thought...
I was scrolling through some images and came across this bandbox fragment. This appears to be about half of the side panel of a box which has been flattened and probably framed at some point. This is a specially printed bandbox paper illustrating a battle or conflict of some sort, though I’m having trouble identifying...
I have long admired the wide children’s borders, also called friezes, designed and produced in the early twentieth century, prior to the Great Depression in 1929. Cooper Hewitt has a fair collection of these with the most popular being Winnie the Pooh, produced ca. 1926, coinciding with the release of the book by A.A. Milne...
This photomural of Jackson Lake is one of three such murals introduced by Foto Murals of California in 1948. Each mural was available in a black and white, or sepia version, and measured approximately 90×180 inches. Each photo was captured by a world renowned landscape photographer, and because of a special process developed by Foto...
The “Views of the American War of Independence” was block printed by the French manufacturer Zuber & Cie starting in 1852 over the background of their prior scenic wallpaper called “Views of North America”; sections of both papers are housed at the Cooper Hewitt. In a complete set there are thirty-two panels, each individual panel...
In 1814, the celebrated Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai—best known his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which included the imminently recognizable Great Wave off Kanagawa—published a 15-volume work titled Manga, containing thousands of illustrations of landscapes, plants and animals, people, decorative ornaments and more. In the mid-1870s, copies of the Manga circulated in France, and the...
Rasch and Company is a West German wallpaper manufacturer known for producing papers designed by celebrated fine artists and designers. In 1929 they created a line of papers designed by the Bauhaus called simply “Bauhaus wallpapers.” Incredibly successful, the line never fully went out of print. In 1950, Rasch developed its Kunstler Tapeten “artists’ wallpaper”...
The Grueby Faience Company was founded in Revere, Massachusetts, in 1897. Grueby quickly grew in popularity and soon collaborated with Tiffany and Co. to produce ceramic lamp bases. Best known for their creation of a distinctive forest-green glaze, Grueby used this colorway on their iconic vases and tiles. Grueby garnered many awards, including accolades from...
