Excerpt from the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies

Susan Nash of Shepherdstown, WV has 35 years of experience in paper conservation and specializes in wallpaper conservation. Her article in the Journal of Advanced Appraisal studies is a very nice overview of the wallpaper industry and conservation of old wallpapers. To order the Journal of Advanced Appraisal Studies, click HERE.

Excerpt from Susan's article follows.



The wallpaper industry in America probably starts in the 1790’s in small shops of émigrés from Europe. There was a strong German and Scandinavian wallpaper industry, too, and no doubt they contributed. Wallpaper type designs were printed for other uses, most notably to cover hatboxes and line wooden boxes and drawers. One important source of early wallpaper designs is the inside of old trunks where handy wallpaper scraps might be applied to freshen a worn interior. There is a large collec-tion of such papers at the Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster, Pa., as well as a large collection of early 20th century common wallpapers from unused rolls found in a general store. Other premier collections are in Boston at SPNEA, Colonial Williamsburg, and at Cooper-Hewitt in New York City.

The technology for manufacturing continuous paper does not really appear until the 1830’s and for a time joined paper and continuous paper overlap in the trade. The next technical advance comes about 1840 in printing. The combination of production of continuous paper stock and surface roller printing of designs by machines set the stage for a massive increase in output of wallpaper. By World War I, it seemed every house in America had walls layered with paper.

The earliest efforts at machine printing are an interesting study in solving technical problems. First, the ink has to be picked up by a roller which then presses against the paper and applies the color. Quickly, the paper reaches the second roller with the second color and this is applied. If the color is too thin, it will not print; if too thick, it will smear; if too wet, it will run; if too dry, it will flake off. Early machine printed papers of the 1840’s will display many of these flaws. There is also a limitation in the size of the roller that limits the distance of the repeat of the pattern. Twelve to eighteen inches would be usual.

Later in the century, twenty-four inch repeats can be found, but by then the technology of wallpaper design, printing and production was something wondrous. The technical achievement of printing up to twenty-four colors of intricate designs with metallic and mica inks was fully mastered. The individual colors were each outlined on a separate roller, a brass collar was pounded into the outline and stuffed with felt, the roller dipped into a tray of ink and then rolled the color onto a continuously moving bolt of paper, all perfectly in register, of proper consistency and drying as it went. One way to distinguish a machine print from a block print is to look for the telltale directionality of the application of the ink in each color. A block print will typically have a buildup of paint around the edge of each color and sometimes suction marks where the block was lifted off. Rather like the pattern left when lifting your boot out of the mud. A machine print with have thinner ink with directional rivulets with a build-up of ink at the lower edge of the color.