Walltastic Thomas and Friends Wallpaper Mural

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What is the use of a desktop wallpaper? Well, adding a wallpaper to your desktop is not mandatory. In fact, you can decide to use a dark colour, and life will move on as usual. However, this element comes with a sense of beauty. They add glamor to your computer and make it look aesthetically appealing and highly presentable. Sometimes, people display their feelings through the use of desktop wallpapers. Interesting, huh? You can add an image that shows how you feel or one that means something to you. Adding a quote will act as a reminder of what inspires you in your day-to-day life. That said, desktop wallpapers cannot be ignored, they mean different things to different people. Before the American Revolution the majority of wallpapers used in the American colonies were imported from England. As early as 1712, England established a tax on wallpaper of 1d (pence) per square yard in addition to the tax levied on the individual undecorated sheets of handmade paper used to make a roll. Duty officers stamped each individual sheet of undecorated paper with a “First Account Taken” stamp and, after it was decorated, with a charge stamp in the form of a crown above an interlaced GR monogram. England repealed the duty tax in 1836 so stamps like the GR interlace help date and attribute early English wallpapers.

A popular and fashionable practice in the 1880s was to divide the wall into three sections–dado, fill, and frieze–to be papered with different but coordinated patterns. Wallpaper firms and decorating books also recommended that consumers cover their ceilings with either plain colored papers or small repeating patterns. Many ceiling papers featured celestial motifs and used metallic gold or silver liquid mica, which produced a glimmering effect upon the ceiling.

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Competition from France increases: Beginning in the late 1780s there was a dramatic increase in imported French wallpapers and, indeed, French wallpapers and their American copies set the style for the next seventy-five years. In 1787, the French eliminated export duties on wallpaper and thereby lowered the cost of purchasing this luxury item. Cost was not the only factor that contributed to the increased use of French papers in New England. French wallpaper firms produced the highest quality and most artfully designed and colorful wallpapers of this period. Nineteenth-century designers and architects revived many earlier styles such as the Gothic, Rococo, and those from the Renaissance and Elizabethan periods. The somber grisaille palette was not limited to use in only pillar and arch patterns, but was used for other large figured papers. Though large figured papers retain a similar scale to the pillar and arch design, the severity of the architectural pattern is enlivened by the inclusion of Rococo and Gothic architectural elements, and classical and pastoral motifs, which may have been copied from popular prints. Manufacturers also began to develop waterproof wallpaper in response to the claim that wallpaper was unsanitary because it was difficult to clean. Sanitary papers were printed with engraved rollers in oil-based pigments that resisted water and could be washed lightly. These were recommended for kitchens, dining rooms, and bathrooms.

Among the most elegant mid-century patterns were those that were embossed and gilded. Printed on heavy paper that could withstand the embossing process, the motifs were sparsely spaced and sometimes included stripes. This type of wallpaper was most often used in parlors. Clough is best known for the commemorative paper of George Washington he advertised less than one year after Washington’s death in 1799. Based on a variation of the pillar and arch design, “ Washington’s Monument” includes classical motifs and allegorical figures of Justice and Liberty weeping over the loss of the national hero. The years following the American Revolution were a fertile period of enterprise for Americans who began to manufacture goods formerly produced and supplied by England. By the late 1780s, a number of paper stainers established workshops in major cities along the Atlantic coast and began to advertise their merchandise. Many sold imported English and French wallpapers along with their own productions, offering consumers a choice of pattern types and a range of prices. Interest in relief decoration was demonstrated by the different methods for producing imitations of embossed and gilded leather wallcoverings, which had been popular in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the earliest embossed wall coverings made to imitate antique embossed leather is Tynecastle, or Modeled Canvas. Developed and patented in 1874 by designer W. Scott Morton (1840-1903), it was produced by hand-pressing sized canvas into carved wooden molds and allowing it to dry. Tynecastle, like many embossed wall coverings of the period, was designed to be colored after it was adhered to the wall.

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English wallpaper companies hired other well-known designers to create distinctive wallpaper styles that were widely imitated both in that country and in America. Among them were Walter Crane William Burges and Christopher Dresser. Re-creating the original bright colors of the designs, rather than the faded colors taken directly from worn fragments, gave period rooms a startling but more accurate appearance. Historic New England was in the forefront of this new approach, commissioning silk-screened reproductions of wallpapers from the documented samples its collection for use in its many properties. Japanese Leather Paper was one of the most successful and extravagant imitations of embossed leather. Produced in Japan by skilled craftsmen, Japanese Leather Paper is composed of fine individual sheets of handmade paper pressed together and then embossed. The entire roll was gilded, and the field color was stenciled over it. A layer of lacquer was then applied as a final coat to provide protection and a luxurious sheen to the finished design. As the century progressed, new materials and printing methods, such as silk screening, were introduced, and vinyl papers gained an important place in commercial and industrial settings. Selected for its durability and ease in cleaning, vinyl wallpaper expanded the wallpaper market beyond the traditional residential consumer to the contract buyer who selected vinyl wallpaper for use in hospitals, hotels, and restaurants. Introduced in 1947 by United Wallpaper, vinyl wallcoverings would become a leading product of the wallpaper industry by the mid-1960s and account for nearly fifty percent of all wallpaper sales.

Reveillon employed the finest designers and engravers who were well versed in the neoclassical vocabulary of ornament derived from archaeological discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Several of Reveillon’s arabesque designs survive on the walls of New England houses, most notably in Phelps-Hathaway House in Suffield, Connecticut. In addition to all-over floral designs, striped floral patterns remained popular during the first half of the nineteenth century. Many of these small-scale designs feature stripes with stylized flower alternating with bands of Xs or dots and are printed in two or three colors. A pattern book of the Hartford, Connecticut, firm Janes & Bolles, in business between 1821 and 1828, contains five colorways of a striped pattern that relates to this variation used to line a pine trunk. Beginning in the 1880s, some wallpaper manufacturers returned to producing designs that imitated more expensive fabrics, including silk and wool damasks, cut velvets, and silk moirés. The earliest record of wallpaper in America is in the estate inventory of a Boston stationer in 1700, where “7 quires of painted paper and three reams of painted paper” were listed. Like all early references, it is more descriptive of quantity than of design. Only one wallpaper in Historic New England’s collection with a history in New England dates to this early period; it was later used to cover a copy book of poetry in 1783. Rococo Revival wallpapers feature naturalistic flowers, C-scrolls, fanciful bouquets, and delicate garlands. American wallpaper manufacturers often copied imported French designs but also created many of their own. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish a high-quality American wallpaper printed on a satin (highly polished) ground from its French counterpart.

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This is a timeless design and were it not for the stamp found on the reverse, it would be difficult to determine that it was an English paper printed in the eighteenth century. Innovative pattern types and techniques: Another pattern type that originated in France and was extremely popular during the early nineteenth century was called a “landscape figure.” These formulaic patterns were composed of rows of two or three repeating vignettes with pastoral or classical themes separated by vertical stripes on a dotted or diapered field. To keep pace with their French competitors, American wallpaper firms produced many adaptations of this style. Made around 1810-1815, this American landscape figure paper was used in a house near Plymouth, Massachusetts; apparently, the home owner didn’t mind that the design was misprinted. French wallpaper manufacturers also developed relatively simple techniques for producing spectacular designs. Jean Zuber experimented with ways of applying multi-colored grounds to the papers. His cousin, Michel Spoerlin, perfected a method of blending multiple ground colors, called irise, on a single roll of paper.