Old Time Wall Papers: An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers' Walls with a Study of the Historical Development of Wall Paper Making and DecorationSanborn, Kate
History
Old Time Wall Papers: An Account of the Pictorial Papers on Our Forefathers' Walls with a Study of the Historical Development of Wall Paper Making and Decoration
Sanborn, Kate
Interior decoration -- History; Wallpaper
A curious paper is supposed to be an attempt to honor the first
railroad. This is in bright colors, with lower panels in common gray
tints. The friend who obtained this for me suggests that the artist did
not know how to draw a train of cars, and so filled up the space
ingeniously with a big bowlder. This is on the walls of a modest little
house, and one wonders that an expensive landscape paper should be on
the room. But the owner of the house was an expressman and was long
employed by Salemites to carry valuable bundles back and forth from
Boston. A wealthy man who resided in Chestnut Street was having his
house papered during the rage for landscape papers, and this person
carried the papers down from Boston so carefully that the gentleman
presented him with a landscape paper of his own, as a reward for his
interest. Now the mansion has long since parted with its foreign
landscapes, but such care was taken of the humble parlor that its paper
is still intact and handsome; it is more than seventy-five years old.
A fine French paper shows a fruit garden, probably the Tuileries, in
grays and blues. The frieze at the top is of white flowers in arches
with blue sky between the arches. This room was papered for Mrs. Story,
the mother of Judge Story, in 1818.
In the Osgood house in Essex Street there is a most beautiful paper,
imported from Antwerp in the early part of the nineteenth century,
depicting a hunting scene. The hunt is centered about the hall and the
game is run down and slain in the last sheet. A balustrade is at the
foot of the picture. The color is brown sepia shades.
One neat little house, in an out-of-the-way corner in Marblehead, has a
French paper in gray, white and black, which was brought from France by
a Marblehead man who was captured by a French privateer and lived in
France many years. When he returned, he brought this with him. It shows
scenes in the life of the French soldiers. They are drinking at inns,
flirting with pretty girls, but never fighting. Another paper has
tropical plants, elephants, natives adorned with little else but
feathers and beads. The careful mother will not allow any of the
children to go alone into this room for fear they may injure it.
In a Chinese paper, one piece represents a funeral, and the horse with
its trappings is being led along without a rider; women and children are
gazing at the procession from pagodas.
On the walls of the Johnson house in North Andover is a Marie Antoinette
paper, imported from England. I have heard of only this one example of
this subject. A number of homes had painted walls, with pictures that
imitated the imported landscapes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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