!

All The News That's Fit To Blockprint!

Issue # 7

August, 2017
 2

note: this special issue of Wallpaper

News consists of a review of David
Skinner's "Wallpaper In Ireland" (2014)
followed by excerpts from the book
courtesy of Churchill House Press.

The Wallpaper History Discussion Group on LinkedIn

continues to grow, standing at over 1500 members: join! It's
free and easy:

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4248838

links to the original articles on the blog:

http://wallpaperscholarblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/
wallpaper-in-irelanda-series.html

http://wallpaperscholarblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/review-
wallpaper-in-ireland-1700-1900.html
 3



REVIEW BY ROBERT M. KELLY

A very large number of houses are always changing their tenants
houses of the middling and cheaper classes more particularly and
a fresh paper is the usual complement of a new tenant.
(The Irish Builder magazine, 1868)

This account of the customary use of wallpaper in central Dublin

reminded me of my parents upbringing in Pittsfield, a small industrial
city in western Massachusetts. Elaine McConkey and Richard Kelly
grew up during the 1930s in large households surrounded by cheap
 4

wallpaper. Renting was a way of life. I also grew up in rented quarters

surrounded by cheap wallpaper, the second of their ten children. I
began Skinners book, then, prepared to hear his assessment of the
Irish contribution to wallpaper history.

The photos reveal Skinner's predecessors. Mrs. Leask and John

OConnell had long foraged the countryside securing remnants of
Irish-stamped wallpaper (as in England, Irish wallpaper was taxed by
the Crown). Many of the samples shown in the book have since found
a home at Fota House (Cork) in theIrish Heritage Trust Collection of
Historic Wallpaper.

The provenance of the wallpapers along with Skinners meticulous

research gives the book the stamp of authority. English and French
wallpapers installed in Ireland are no less scrutinized. The samples
come from all strata of society. The firsthand evidence is often
thrilling. Its one thing to know that the Cowtan company of London
furnished Irish estates, and another thing to have found, as he did,
penciled inscriptions from Cowtans workers on the very walls of
Carton and Coollattin.

On the evidence of this book important paperstaining shops in the

United Kingdom were not limited to a few English cities but were
common in Ireland, at least leading up to the high-water mark of the
mid-nineteenth century. While Skinner's book does not exactly upend
the conventional portrait of a dominant English wallpaper culture
within the UK, it does confront those assumptions with new evidence.
He shows the character of wallpaper production in Ireland and how
that production affected that of other countries.

Skinner challenges assumptions that English or Irish wallpaper is

easily sorted into stereotypes. The range of finish was vast. Of
course, each nation had areas of specialization, and some were quite
distinctive. But these exemplars, so visually arresting and therefore
so appealing to one's preferences, can have a tendency to
overshadow the essential sameness of wallpaper in context, when
each pattern for sale was simply one choice among many. Within
 5

these generalities, there were recognizable facts and trends. For

example, Skinner all but proves that the middling and cheaper
classes were the primary consumers of wallpaper in Ireland in the
nineteenth century. This seems to have been true for the North
American market as well.

If there was an Irish style, it seems to have been equal parts cheap,
harmonious, and staid, judging from these photos. That said, there
was also a preference for a significant number of down-market
papers of almost punishing vivacity that pose a challenge to our
twenty-first century sensibilities. Did people reallylikethese
outrageous colors and designs? Apparently, they did. An example of
a 'fancy flowered, rainbowed' paper from France sold by James
Boswell in the 1830s is shown below (Figure 189).


 6

At the other end of the scale the book shows agreeably-aged

wallpapers draping many stately homes. These now-echoing castles,
country homes, and great halls may be stately but they are
nevertheless domiciles thus validating their inclusion here.

Historical wallpapers have been increasingly integrated into museum

collections and thereby saved for posterity, a generally happy result.
But, we must remember that this acceptance is no substitute for what
has been lost, namely, an essential linkage: that a particular pattern
was chosen by a particular person for a particular room. The
acquisition of wallpapers by museums therefore presents risks as
well as rewards: a risk that these artifacts might be presented and
appreciated as what they were never intended to be: art. It is
encouraging to see that this risk was seemingly anticipated and
avoided in the present volume. The wallpapers come from a wide
variety of collections, but they are consistently presented in context
as fresh complements to the arrival of new tenants or as patterns
chosen to enhance a beloved residence.

Chapter Six will probably appeal the most to students of North

American history. Here we learn how native producers emerged and
sustained themselves within a market defined by foreign rivals; how
various grades of wallpaper were brought to market; and who bought
them. The marketing story, like the question of style, is not simply
national. Many of the economic variables (tariffs, taxes, competition,
and contraband) were international in scope, and they mattered
absolutely: one or two of these variables could make or break a small
producer. None of these aspects are neglected by Skinner.

Many of the nuances of Irish history (for example, that the aristocratic
lifestyle all but vanished in Dublin after the Act of Union in 1800) are
sure to slip by American readers. Yet this in no way lessens Skinner's
achievement. He paints a lively picture against a shifting backdrop as
the village and family paperstainers of the eighteenth century gave
way to the factories of the nineteenth. Skinner demonstrates that Irish
wallpaper was dominant in the home market and available for only a
 7

few pence per roll by the mid-1840s. Yet, this was a qualified
success.

None of the Irish shops grew to the size of English behemoths such
as Heywood, Higginbotham, and Smith. The long-delayed utilization
of continuous paper and newly-invented machinery for printing
sparked proliferation world-wide by around 1850. Ireland certainly
saw proliferation, but it was hands-on and small scale. Indeed, Irish
shops can hardly be described as mechanized, since block-printing
was almost exclusively employed throughout the nineteenth century.
The industry petered out completely by 1880.

Why did mechanization of paper-hangings skip over Ireland? Skinner

makes no claims that his book is a sociological text, but he does point
out on page 164 that Ireland lost four million people to famine and
emigration between 1841 and 1900, becoming thereby the only
European nation to lose population in those years. These losses
occurred at the very time that mechanization was taking hold
elsewhere.

Many wallpaper historians have implied that the rise of machine-

printing was swift and that it soon replaced block-printing. Skinners
book throws some light on these assumptions. He notes that in 1845
Moses Staunton was dissatisfied with the new English-made
machine-prints: he found the colours lasted but a few days from
being put on the walls . This technological speed bump has been
evident (a discussion of the shortcomings of machine-prints was
published in the Journal of Design and Manufactures of 1851) yet
shortcomings like thin, watery inks and botched registration have not
been brought to the surface in secondary sources until now. This new
information rounds out our picture of late-nineteenth century shops
and helps explain why block-printing continued in English, French,
Canadian, and American shops long after machinery had arrived.

Skinner describes the country house Ballinterry as solid, rambling,

and unpretentious. This might be said as well about Skinners text.
He provides just enough helpful redundancy. I appreciated this
 8

foundation as I struggled to keep up with his brisk gallop through two

centuries of decorative history. The photography is exceptional.
Figure 112 (showing borders from 1810) practically explodes off the
page.



The wooly flock, shiny metallics, pin-dots, and irregularities of the

blockprints show the tactile qualities of early wallpaper. The simple
but effective designs of the cheap self-grounded papers hint at why
they were so popular. Self-grounded wallpapers (colored in the pulp)
were very popular in the nineteenth century. Yellow, pink, and brown
were typical colors. This coloring saved the work of grounding the
paper before printing, thus reducing cost.
The inclusion of many gorgeous photos of oddball print-room types
and art-historical darlings such as the Chinese scenics and the Cupid
& Psych series (from Dufour) threaten to tip the book into coffee-
 9

table territory. Yet Skinner includes many previously unpublished

details about Hamiltons Etruscan prints in the print-room section. He
also explains how Tischbein adapted them for the wall. We learn why
Hamilton and Tischbein were inspired, who carried this trade out, and
how tastemakers and householders realized the possibilities. The 237
color photos are accompanied by just enough context. Captions and
photos are precisely placed, a virtue not always found in wallpaper
books.


 10

Skinner dutifully reports on the few French arabesques that are

known to have been used in Ireland (many more were advertised)
and tidies up some lingering anomalies about the late-eighteenth
century Sherringham and Eckhardt factories, both located in the
London area. His chapter on Edward Duras, who successfully
transplanted his paperstaining business from Dublin to Bordeaux,
France, is a revelation.

Skinner sorts out many corners of wallpaper history. For example, its
well-known that a group of Irish paperstainers emigrated to Liverpool
in the early nineteenth century and thrived for the next fifty years. He
explains their rise and fall. Much fresh information is provided about
James Boswells company. Boswells designs, his upright business
methods (not emulated by all of his competitors) and his impact on
the paperstaining culture are on display, which is quite an
accomplishment since Boswells company had been little more than a
footnote. Skinner notes that over a hundred Boswell designs have
been deposited in the Office of the Registrar of Designs in Kew,
forming what is arguably the most comprehensive body of work for
any Irish paperstainer. Nothing like this exists in the United States.

Skinner puts Morris-type papers in context, describing their designs

as organic and neo-vernacular. He shows how Irish manufacturers
juggled processes, styles, and regulations to see off competitors,
poach patterns, and capture markets.

An art nouveau design on self-grounded paper (Figure 212, shown

below) proves that no design, however avant-garde, was beyond
exploitation. It is a cheap machine-print, most likely English. By the
time this pattern was printed about 1890 the Irish industry had
collapsed.

 11

To take on 200 years of decorative history,

albeit that of a single product in a single
country, is a daunting task. Skinner has
succeeded by imaginatively reconstructing
and communicating the outlooks of those
intimately associated with the product
paperstainers, retailers, paperhangers, and
consumers. He has contributed a sound
history of the rise and fall of the Irish paper-
hangings industry, fulfilling one of his stated
goals. But, more important, his book will
certainly influence wallpaper studies
because of its firm grasp on the historical
context within which these wallpaper
artifacts must be understood. Wallpaper In
Ireland teaches much about the Irish
people and their craft traditions. But it also
shows that when it comes to wallpaper, no
country is an island.

==========
end of review
section
==========
 12



Herewith an examination in serial form of David

Skinner's recent book.
 13



from the Introduction:

...One of Ireland's lesser-known trades, its history largely

forgotten,wallpaper manufactureemployed many hundreds of people in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when locally-produced papers were
sold and used alongside those imported from other countries. Charting the
history of wallpaper use by examining surviving examples and the
documentary record, this book aims to awaken some echoes of the people
who bought wallpaper in Ireland or who spent their lives in making it, and to
trace the contexts of its production and design
 14

Paper-staining, as the trade came to be known, took root, flourished and

declined in Ireland in an arc of activity spanning the century and a half
between the 1720s and the 1870sIn England wallpaper manufacture was
developed by well-capitalized companies like the Blue Paper Company,
backed by investors with an expansionist outlook on foreign markets, while
in Ireland artisanal family businesses, passed on from fathers to sons,
operated in an isolated and hermetic economy, training apprentices who,
when they became masters, had either to carve out a share of a limited
market or emigrate. By the 1830s Dublin was said to have more master
wallpaper makers than all of Britain, but only a few of them were doing
much more than eking out a living. To a great extent, what differentiates
Irish wallpapers from those made in Britain is not so much their design as
the circumstances and conditions of their production.

A central aim of the present study is to chart the rise and fall of the Irish
paper-stainer, from the artisan workshops which supplied the wealthy elite of
Georgian society to the clandestine garrets which sent contraband wallpapers
to Victorian Britain....This book illustrates the richness and diversity of the
styles and patterns which formed the backdrop to domestic lives in Ireland
over two centuries...

===

 15



(from Chapter 1)

Single women, either widowed or unmarried, owned a significant proportion

of paper staining and related businesses in Dublin. One of these was the
widow Catherine McCormick, whose career path, from humble beginnings,
through early widowhood and into prosperous old age, shows how an astute
and determined woman could thrive in the artisan milieu. When she
appeared as a witness in the trial of Richard Annesley, Lord Altham - one of
eighteenth-century Dublins most notorious legal cases - McCormick gave
her occupation as 'stamping or printing papers for rooms'. Her evidence at
the trial provides some details about her station in life before she entered the
wallpaper trade.

In 1714, she had been a servant at the rooming house of a Mr Vice, near
Temple Bar. It is not known when she married the paper-stainer John
McCormick, but she was widowed in Christmas week 1741 when her
husband was 'taken out of the Liffey at Aston Quay, greatly wounded in the
head and died immediately'. According to a newspaper report he had been in
 16

the company of a friend, and 'being in liquor they both fell into the river
together'. From the time she was widowed in 1741 until she formed a
businesspartnership in her sixties with another paper-stainer Thomas Benn,
she ranthe business on her own from her house in Essex Street.

A typical advertisement from Faulkners Dublin Journal in 1762 gives a

picture of a feisty businesswoman intent on seeing off competition: 'The
Widow McCormick, Paper-Stamper, ...continues to make all kind of Paper
Hangings, and has lately imported a great variety of new English Papers -
her chief End in importing being to have it in her power to select the best
Patterns, and copy from the Originals, and has at present finished several
Patterns, that, from the great Care taken in executing them, vie in
competition with the English, and which, she presumes, must far excel the
copiesmade after hers'.

===

(from Chapter 2: Flock And Chintz Papers)

Among the print works which sprang up on the rivers around Dublin, that of
Thomas and Margaret Ashworth in Donnybrook was unusual in that it
produced both textiles and wallpapers. The Ashworths specialised in printing
chintzes both for furnishing and 'for ladies' wear in Indian sprigs', and from
1753 expanded their output to include their 'Donnybrook papers for hanging
rooms', designed to match their 'chintz patterns for furniture in the cotton
and linen way'. Chintz is one of the styles most frequently mentioned in
advertisements from the 1750s until the early 1770s, and nearly every
Dublin paper-stainer supplied his - or her - own version.

The evident popularity of chintz-patterned papers is reflected in the number

of examples which have been found in Irish houses of all sizes, from
Castletown, County Kildare, to Dublin's Eustace Street. In copying the
appearance of textile chintzes, Dublin paper-stainers used a similar palette of
purples, pinks, blues and yellows, contained within black, or sometimes red,
outlines, often selecting those pigments which could, in a gum medium,
 17

emulate the transparent shades found on printed cloth. Chintz patterns were
frequently printed straight onto the paper surface, without a preparatory
ground coat of colour, allowing the creamy tone of the rag paper to stand in
for the white background usual in Indian cottons. The black or red outlines
were block-printed and the remaining colour applied by stencilling or hand-
brushing - a process known as pencilling - which was often carried out by
young girls.

(photo below) Fig. 28: Chintz-patterned wallpaper, block-printed outlines

and pin dots on ungrounded paper, stencilled colours, mid-eighteenth
century. Casteltown, County Kildare.



 18

(from Chapter 3: Stucco And 'Architect' Paper



The rivalry between Augustine Berville and Thomas Fuller was conducted
very publicly, if relatively politely, through the pages of the Universal
Advertiser from 1753 until 1757, when John Gordon, having apparently
poached one of the Frenchmans Irish employees, advertised his own version
of paper stucco, claiming that his 'designs, models and moulds, are entirely
new and conducted by a native who he engages, whose performance
convinces the public, that he is a better hand than any brought fromabroad'.
 19

This announcement provoked a three-way media tussle, with Berville, Fuller

and Gordon taking out lengthy advertisements which sometimes appeared on
the same newspaper page (see below, Universal Advertiser of 19 April
1757).

Gordon appealed to his customers' patriotic sentiments, while Berville

responded that 'though not a native, he employs none but natives'. As the
quarrel escalated, Berville complained that 'one in particular' of his rivals
had 'maliciously reported that he [Berville] had left the Kingdom and that no
more of his Manufactory was to be had'. Perhaps in an attempt to hit back at
Gordon, Berville began selling paperhangings in July 1757,but this venture
was shortlived, and he may have actually left Ireland soon after, as no more
is heard of him. Gordon continued to advertise paper stucco into the late
1760s, describing himself as 'Paper-stamper and Stucco-maker in Papier-
machi.
===


 20



In Chapter 3 David Skinner discusses two wallpapers shown in "An Interior

With Members of a Family". On p. 48 of Wallpaper in New England
(WINE) there are further references - see immediately above for fragments
now at Historic New England taken from the General Glover house in
Marblehead. The fragments show a woman leaning against the balustrade.
Fig. 3-16 in Lynn (Wallpaper In America) shows the English model for the
chimney breast paper. Her fig. 3-17 shows an American knock-off, with
pattern reversed, from the shop of Zechariah Mills of Hartford.

Skinner, p. 201: The design of the main paper comprises a round arch
supported on paired columns resting on sections of wall joined by a
balustrade, behind which is a domed tempietto. These features correspond
with a wallpaper which was used in the stair hall of Sparhawk Hall
in Kittery Point, Maine, some time after 1759, described in R. Nylander,
Wallpaper in New England (Boston 1986), 48-51. There, the pattern was
further embellished with a pair of birds and the figure of a woman resting on
 21

the balustrade - details which may have existed in the Irish example painted
by Lowry but were too small for the artist to show.

The slightly different wallpaper used on the chimney breast in the painting
has the same arrangement of arch and columns, but the space beneath is
filled with a view of further colonnades in perspective. A similar paper to
this was found in the Samuel Buckingham house, Old Saybrook,
Connecticut, built in 1768. This is illustrated in Lynn, Wallpaper in
America, 82, fig. 3-16. Both this and the Sparhawk Hall paper carried
English excise stamps.

===

(fromChapter 4; India Paper and Chinoiserie):

From his shop in Capel Street, Samuel Dixon sold sets of India paper, as
well as 'India pictures for Japanning or mock China' and an array of art
materials for gentlemen and ladies' amusements', while the upholsterer
Claude Duplain suggested these might be used for 'screens, doing up rooms,
or making China and French flowered silks'. On a visit to Lucan House,
County Dublin, in 1749, Mrs Delany spent the afternoon with her friend Mrs
Vesey, who 'had a whim to have Indianfigures and flowers cut out and oiled,
to be transparent, and pasted on her dressing-room window in imitation of
painting on glass'.

An early scheme which employed small Chinese paintings as wallpaper is

the set of around twenty-four individual pictures framed in borders painted
to resemble bamboo, bought by Archbishop Cobbe for the museum room at
Newbridge, County Dublin, built around 1737. Although the original paper
is no longer in Newbridge, it has been replaced by a skilfully painted copy,
so that the impression of the room's original appearance has been retained.
References in eighteenth-century inventories suggest that the use of Chinese
papers was more widespread than the handful of surviving examples would
allow: eleven panels of 'India paper pictures' adorned the marble hall of
Dromana, County Waterford, in 1755, while those in the parlour of
 22

Stackallan, County Meath, were dismissed as being very ordinary' by a

valuer in 1757.

photo below, top: Westport House, County Mayo, Chinese wallpaper detail.
The group of figures has an identical counterpart in Ballyfin, the only
differences being in the colouring. It seems that various methods of serial
production, including tracing and the use of printing blocks, were practised
in the manufacture of Chinese wallpapers.

photo below, bottom: Detail of Chinese wallpaper now at Ballyfin, County

Laois, originally from Schloss Marienburg, near Hanover, Germany.


 23


1. Figure 89

(from Chapter 5; The Distinctively Un-French Wallpapers Of Edward Duras,

Irish Paper-Stainer Of Bordeaux):

Edward Duras was an Irish paper-stainer with a twist: he moved his business
from Dublin to France. Duras's papers employ a number of ingenious
devices to suggest the appearance of brocade and lace. One, printed in black
and white on a yellow ground, uses the 'slip print' technique to create an
effect of relief (fig. 89). This method of printing required the printer to use
the same block for two consecutive colours, off-setting the print slightly the
second time in order to create the impression of a shadow.
 24

In another pattern, horizontal dashes printed in white onto crimson and pink
stripes convey the shimmer of silk brocade (fig. 90). A similar, though
somewhat cruder, paper with a rich red ground has been found in a small
first-floor room in Dublin's Eustace Street, where it had been hung over an
earlier chintz-patterned paper, probably in the late 1770s (fig. 91).


2. Figure 90

The resemblance underlines the fact that Duras's patterns are distinctively
un-French and correspond closely with styles described by his Dublin
contemporaries in their advertisements. Wallpaper patterns based on
Dresden lace and lustering were among those offered by an anonymous
English manufacturer at an auction in College Green in 1770, while Thomas
Gibton sold 'lace, compartments and other patterns of the newest and most
elegant taste. Gibton's 'compartments' may have been similar to another of
Duras's patterns at Dax, in which the background to a main pattern printed in
white is filled in with areas of smaller floral motifs in black, contained
 25

within solid black boundaries (fig. 92). The palette of greys, yellows and
pinks favoured by Duras reflects the range of newly popular colours
advertised by Dublin paper-stainers in the 1770s, which continued to be used
mostly as backgrounds, with the main patterns printed in black, white or
grey.


3. Figures 91, 92
 26

(from Chapter 5):

Of Ulster Scots descent, Moses Staunton of Belfast, 'room paper

manufacturer,' was the founding father of the wallpaper industry in
CanadaMoses was established in business by 1843, when an
advertisement placed in the Ulster Directory informed the public that his
factory on Arthur Street was producing 3,000 rolls of wallpaper per week
for the English and Scotch markets, and listed some of the types held in
stock - 10,000 rolls of bedroom paper, 5,000 of parlour and drawing room
papers, and 1,000 rolls of oak paper. Both 'common Sorts' and 'finer Sorts' of
room papers were offered, including a large stock of the novel machine-
printed papers imported from factories in the north-east of England, which
could be purchased from five pence ha'penny per roll.

...some mystery surrounds the dramatic decision he took in 1854 to emigrate

with his wife and six children to North Americaafter initial hardships,
Staunton was able, once again, to set up in the paper-staining business.
Stauntons pride in triumphing over adversity is evident in the Christmas
letter he wrote in 1856 'If I had not laid off my coat and went and done my
own paper hanging here, I believe I would have been beat', wrote the former
factory owner'I often make a pound a day putting up paper. I get 10d per
piece and it is no trouble to do 15 to 20 of them in the day'.

Three of his sons, Moses, James and Albert, worked with him, while his
daughter Mary ran the small rented shop. By the end of 1856...Staunton was
able to write that 'I have got into the finest paper shop I ever had' in 'the very
best corner of the city'. With a turkey in front of the fire and the children 'out
on a pond with their skates onwe have the happiest house in the Empire,
all doing the best they can for each other'.

===
 27

'SATIN' OR 'PLAIN': DEGREES OF LUXURY

A family of moderate or comfortable means shopping for wallpaper in

Dublin around 1810 would have encountered locally made and imported
papers across a broad range of prices. At the bottom (and illicit) end of the
scale, wallpaper could be bought 'free' of tax for as little as 1s 4d per roll,
considerably cheaper than in England, and at a level of affordability which
accounted for the more widespread use of wallpaper in Ireland by 'the
humbler sort', as a government inquiry of 1835put it.

The same inquiry found that wallpaper was generally cheaper in Dublin than
in London, and was used by a greater proportion of the population in Ireland
than in England. At the top end of the scale, Patrick Boylan could charge his
affluent clients anything from 12s up to 10s per roll. Wallpaper prices were
dictated largely by the number of blocks - and hence the length of time -
taken to print a pattern, but also by other factors such as the quality of the
pigments used, or the time spent on additional finishes such as 'satining'.
This process imparted a silky sheen to the otherwise matt distemper ground
colour before the pattern was printed, and was produced by rubbing the
painted surface with a smooth stone and talcum powder or wax. When
picking a pattern, customers were given the choice between satin and plain
grounds, as references in order books and on invoices attest.

The same pattern could be supplied with variations at different costs. In 64

Eccles Street, Dublin, the sprig pattern used in the rear attic bedroom is a
two-colour print, but for the front bedroom a third block has been employed
to add a pin-dot ground pattern. The promise of novelty and exclusivity
could also be used as persuasive selling points and justified higher prices.
Papers bought in from English producers or designs purchased by the paper-
stainer from free-lance pattern drawers with an eye for current trends may
have attracted a higher premium than the standard efforts produced in-house.
This perhaps explains the names attached to relatively expensive patterns
supplied by Patrick Boylan for Mount Bellew in 1810, such as 'Cooke's
 28

damask paper on blue sattin' or 'Cheever's damask paper, black flock on

plain scarlet', the most expensive paper on the bill, at 20s per roll.

fig. 100 (below): Wallpaper, block-printed in one colour on ungrounded ,

poor quality paper, c.1836-40. An example of the cheapest quality of paper
available in the early to mid-nineteenth century.



 29

fig. 101 (below): Wallpaper, block-printed in two colours on ungrounded,

poor quality paper.Like the example in fig. 100, this was cheaply-produced
using low grade materials. Both arehand block-printed on the continuous
roll paper which became available to paper-stainers followingthe abolition
of the wallpaper duty in 1836.



 30

(from Chapter 7):



While richly patterned papers based on rococo silks continued to be made by

Edward Duras in Bordeaux and his contemporaries in Dublin well into the
1770s, a simpler fashion developed for plain coloured, unpatterned walls set
off with narrow block-printed or papier mch borders. Schemes of this kind
suited the linear, compartmentalised style of neo-classical furniture and
decoration generally, and might be compared to the delicate satinwood tables
made in Dublin by William Moore, with their inlaid edging and
crossbanding. The move to a more simplified decor reflected wider changes
in social practice and attitudes, as manners became less formal, dress more
comfortable and hairstyles less elaborately constructed and powdered. In
North America and England, forward-thinking democrats favoured the new
style - George Washington bought 'a handsome plain paper' as early as 1763,
and some years later, describing his plans for decorating Mount Vernon,
 31

wrote that he had 'seen rooms with gilded borders; made, I believe, of papier
Mache fastened on with Brads or Cement round the Doors and Window
Casings, Surbase, &ca.: and which gives a plain blew, or green paper a
rich and handsome look'.

None of these papier mch borders have survived in Ireland, but a

collection of unused block-printed borders of around 1800 from Killadoon,
County Kildare, is of the kind which might have been employed in such
schemes (see photo below). The top two examples would have been used
with plain papers with matching ground colours, while the bottom two may
have had co-ordinating patterned papers.



To decorate a room in this way, the walls would first be lined with a paper of
relatively coarse quality before being hung with sheets of 'elephant' - a large-
format paper of fine quality often mentioned in paper-stainers' bills. The
sheets would be applied with the edges slightly overlapped and, when dry,
 32

these would be rubbed carefully with pumice stone to minimise the visibility
of the seams. The colour, usually distemper, would then be applied in up to
three coats. For country customers the paper could be supplied in rolls, ready
painted. In 1776 at her Essex Street shop, 'the Britannia Stampt Paper
Warehouse,' Anne Kent offered 'a variety of plain coloured papers prepared
for the country'. Five years earlier 'various patterns of gold and white papier-
mach borders' were supplied by George Kent of Arran Quay to set off
rooms which he offered to 'paint to perfection'.

=====


 33

(from Chapter 8):

Although the concept of a non-repeating sequence of images has an obvious

antecedent in Chinese wallpapers, a more immediate and contemporary
stimulus for the invention of scenic papers in France around 1800 can be
found in the popular painted panoramas which were displayed in European
cities in the 1780s and 90s. The idea of painting a 360-degree topographical
view onto the interior walls of a specially constructed cylindrical room
seems first to have occurred to Robert Barker (1739-1806), an Irish portrait
painter living in Edinburgh in 1787, where he produced a view of the entire
city as seen from Calton Hill. Barker patented his invention, for which he
coined the term 'panorama', and took it to London. Some years later the
American engineer, Robert Fulton, introduced similar panoramas to Paris,
opening two 'rotundas' on the Boulevard Montmartre in 1799, around the
time that the first 'panoramic papers were conceived.

In Dublin they were available from the Grafton Street shop of John and
James Boswell.The Boswells announced that they 'have personally
opened a communication with the Principal Houses in their Line in Paris',
and go on to list some of the sets in their stock, including 'Cupid and Psyche
in bistres and Indian ink

Dufours monochrome sequence depicting the tale of Cupid and Psyche was
based on a 1669 novel of Jean de Ia Fontaine, and was commissioned from
the leading neo-classical painters Louis Lafitte and Merry-Joseph Blondel.
In the 1860s a set of Cupid and Psyche was installed on the ceiling of the
library of Stradbally Hall, County Laois - an unorthodox and probably
unique instance of a scenic paper being used in this way.

(below): Stradbally Hall, County Laois,detail of wallpaper Psych

recueillie par un Pcheur.
 34



=====

(from Chapter 9; Commerce And Contraband):

Throughout the nineteenth century the upper classes in Ireland continued to

employ London decorating firms such as Cowtan... or Dublin firms such as
 35

Sibthorpe's, whose intricately stencilled ceilings can still be seen at Fota in

Cork, and who can be seen as the successors to Boylan. The middle classes
who bought furnishings covered a very wide spectrum of occupations,
income levels and types of accommodation, and most suppliers stocked
papers across a correspondingly broad price range. Thomas Dockrell of
South Great Georges Street, for example, supplied English, French and
locally produced paper hangings from 3d to 15s per roll.

An 1856 advertisement of J. Cosgrave of Dublin's Henry Street is useful in

that it provides a range of price levels for different areas of the house,
including drawing room 'satins' from 1s 6d to 2s 6d per roll, parlour papers
from 1s to 2s, oaked and marbled papers for the hallway or saloon from 1s
and 'an endless variety of beautiful Chintzes' for bedrooms from 6d to 1s.
These prices are at the lower end of the scale, yet suggest customers whose
homes offered a degree of spaciousness and comfort. Papers at this price
level may have been largely destined for the rental sector, which constituted
the greater part of the housing stock. As The Irish Builder noted in 1868:
A very large number of houses are always changing their tenants - houses of
the middling and cheaper classes more particularly - and a 'fresh paper' is the
usual complement of a new tenant'. Machine printing offered affordable
decoration in an 'infinite variety of pattern and design', as the anonymous
author noted: 'It is one of the advantages of paper-hangings that the
commonest and cheapest are often the most agreable or prettiest'.

(below): Block-printed in five colours on a rainbow ground. An example of

the type of fancy flowered, rainbowed papers sold by Boswell in the 1830s.
Killadoon, County Kildare.
 36



 37



(from Chapter 10; Victorian Abundance):

James Boswell's papers featuring multi-coloured birds and flowers combined

with rococo or arabesque scrollwork against white grounds were typical of
many French-inspired designs....By 1851, the popularity of French styles
with the buying public and the dearth of originality among English
manufacturers drove several prominent critics to launch a campaign for
artistic reform....The drive to educate public taste began with the
identification of styles which were judged to be unacceptable, through events
such as the Exhibition of False Principles in Design' staged in London in
1852....
 38

Many of the designs registered by Boswell and other Irish paper-stainers

exemplify those attributes singled out for criticism: florid and gaudy
compositions, consisting of architectural ornament in relief, with imitative
flowers and foliage... rendered with the full force of their natural colours and
light and shade, as the artist and designer Richard Redgrave, one of the
leading reformers, described such elaborate and popular patterns.

Edith Somerville, recalling the decoration of her grandmother's house... in

the 1860s, wrote of the drawing room as 'a place of great sanctity, wherein
the foot of child never trod save by special invitation...Its wallpaper was
white, spaced into large diamonds with a Greek pattern of gold and it shone
like satin. It was less dashing in design than the paper of the inner hall and
the staircase, whose pattern was of endless ladders of large blue and orange
flowers (tropic, one believed them to be) that raged from the bottom of the
house to the top, but the drawing room was devoted to the ladies, and in it
dash gave way to refinement'. The 'tropic' blue and orange flowers used in
the hallway sound very much like the kind of patterns produced by Boswell
in the 1840s and '50s.

(photo above): Wallpaper block-printed in twelve colours, James Boswell,

Dublin, 1842. National Archives, London.

===
 39



the conclusion of the series.....

David Skinner On Preserving The mild grandeur Of Irish Country Houses

The author and Irish peer Lord Dunsany wrote in 1935: 'There is a right and
a wrong place for antiquity; it is right in walls, wrong in carpets; wrong too
in curtains and wallpaper'.

Yet this view does not seem to have been universally shared in Irish country
houses, where there is ample evidence of efforts on the part of the occupants
to preserve wallpapers beyond what might be considered their natural
lifespan. Ingenious makeshifts such as the gramophone needles used to hold
up the paper in the dining room at Strokestown, or the cuttings from colour
magazines used to patch the Chinese paper at Narrow Water, seem to imply
something more than mere financial constraint, and suggest that the owners
of these houses believed, like Henri Clouzot, that wallpaper 'has always been
 40

the echo of somebody or something', and might, for that reason, be worth
preserving. The novelist and short story writer Elizabeth Bowen expressed
something of this kind of veneration in her reminiscence of the literary
house parties she gave in her family home at Bowens Court, County Cork:

The last act of any Bowen's Court day plays itself out in the drawing
room or library...Pink curtains drawn, lamp lit, with a fire in a
wreathed Victorian grate, my grandmother's drawing room has the
effect of keying us up to its mild grandeur. It was decorated, and has
not been changed since, when that Elizabeth came here as a bride:
1859. She loved its grey-and-gold scrolled wallpaper, and plaster frieze
swagged with roses - and I don't wonder.

(fig. 111 below): Ballindoolin, County Kildare. Intricate cutting enhances the
impact of the prominent border, originally highlighted with silver leaf, now
tarnished, which surrounds a vibrant paper printed in the iris style, and
installed in the Drawing Room of Ballindoolin in the 1820s.


 41

Many of the wallpapers illustrated in these pages are found in privately

owned houses, whose owners appreciate and look after them as best they
can. Beyond a certain stage in its natural ageing process, however, the
physical preservation of wallpaper calls for time-consuming and expensive
attention, a step which, given the negligible economic value of most old
wallpapers, might understandably be regarded by home-owners as a sacrifice
to posterity. Replacement with a reproduction is a solution which at best
preserves the outlines of an individual pattern within its historic framework
or scheme, but comes at the cost of losing a direct link to the hand of the
artisan and the eye of the original purchaser.

Effacement of the artefact entails losing not just genuinely historic paper,
binder and pigment, but also the physical embodiment of an entangled
network of materials, technologies, skills and human relationships, some of
which have been examined in this book. The foreseeable and - it is hoped -
gradual loss of authentic examples of wallpapers in their original contexts
may be balanced by ongoing research into the wider outlines of the subject.
Any piece of historic wallpaper can be the starting point of a web of object-
centred lines of enquiry, leading down multiple paths and building into
something which might, in its own way, create a pattern worth tracing.
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 43

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