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 — John Shaqi
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
I. Reliefs sculptured in marble or stone; the oldest method of wall
decoration.
II. Marble veneer; the application of thin marble linings to wall
surfaces, these linings often being highly variegated.
III. Wall linings of glazed bricks or tiles. In the eleventh and
twelfth centuries, the Moslems of Persia brought their art to great
perfection and used it on a large scale, chiefly for interiors. In the
most beautiful specimens, the natural growth of trees and flowers is
imitated. About 1600 A. D., this art was brought to highest perfection.
IV. Wall coverings of hard stucco, frequently enriched with relief and
further decorated with delicate paintings in gold and colors, as at the
Alhambra at Granada and the Alcazar at Seville.
V. Sgraffito; a variety of stucco work used chiefly in Italy, from the
sixteenth century down. A coat of stucco is made black by admixture of
charcoal. Over this a second very thin coat of white stucco is laid. The
drawing is made to appear in black on a white ground, by cutting away
the white skin enough to show the black undercoat.
VI. Stamped leather; magnificent and expensive, used during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Italy, Spain, France, and later
in England.
VII. Painted cloth. In _King Henry IV._, Falstaff says his soldiers are
"slaves, as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." Canvas, painted to
imitate tapestry, was used both for ecclesiastical and domestic
hangings. English mediæval inventories contain such items as "stayned
cloth for hangings"; "paynted cloth with stories and batailes"; and
"paynted cloths of beyond-sea-work." The most important existing example
is the series of paintings of the Triumph of Julius Caesar, now in
Hampton Court. These designs were not meant to be executed in tapestry,
but were complete as wall-hangings. Godon, in _Peinture sur Toile_,
says: "The painted canvasses kept at the Hôtel Dieu at Rheims were done
in the fifteenth century, probably as models for woven tapestries. They
have great artistic merit. The subjects are religious." Painted cloths
were sometimes dyed in a manner similar to those Indian stuffs which
were afterwards printed and are now called chintzes. It is recorded
somewhere, that the weaving industry was established at Mulhouse
(Rixheim) by workers who left Rheims at a time when laws were passed
there to restrict the manufacture of painted cloths, because there was
such a rage for it that agriculture and other necessary arts were
neglected.
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