PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Methods of wallpaper production and mounting
knowledge of pigments and paints helps to date a wallpaper or
even determine its origin.
Before several inorganic synthetic pigments were developed
at the end of the 18th century and during the 19th century, most
of the colours used for printing wallpapers were earth pigments
(e.g. yellow ochre, umber and terre verte) 208 in the 18th century.
Fashionable papers were occasionally printed with blue and
green verditer, and Prussian blue and carmine were used to
colour textile fibres for flocked wallpapers. Dark outlines were
printed with ivory black.
In comparison to the dull-coloured European papers of the
time, imported chinoiserie wallpapers were painted with malachite
green, carmine red, lapis lazuli and azurite blue. 209
According to a book published by Theodor Seeman 210 in 1882,
earth pigments and mineral pigments were used to print wallpapers.
The most common earth pigments included Bolus and
Cardinal purple (Caput Mortuum) for red, Ultramarine and Azurite
for blue, Malachite and Green Earth for green, Yellow Earth
and Ocker for yellow, Brown Ocker, Umbra and Raw Sienna for
brown, and limestone, chalk and kaolin for white. A much larger
number of mineral pigments were used to print wallpapers. The
most common of them were Cinnabar, Red Lead, Chrome Red
and Venetian Red for red, Chrome Yellow, Massicot, Napels Yellow
and Cadmium Yellow for yellow, Zinc Green, Chrome Green
and Cinnabar Green for green, Blue Verditer, Ultramarin, Blue
Mountain and Prussian Blue for blue, Carbon Black and Bone
Black for black and Zinc White for white.
The discovery of synthetic substitutes of various pigments
made it easier and cheaper to produce certain colours, which
otherwise needed to be mined and prepared at great expense.
New pigments made it possible to print more complicated and
colourful designs more cheaply and with less effort.
208
Ibid., 61.
209
Ibidem.
210
Theodor Seemann, Die Tapete, ihre ästhetische Bedeutung und technische Darstellung
sowie kurze Beschreibung der Bunt-Papier Fabrikation, U. Hartleben’s Verlag, Wien,
Pest, Leipzig, 1882, 142–177.
125