PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Introduction
Wallpaper has been used for at least four hundred years as a
material to decorate walls in public and domestic interiors. Like
carpets and textiles, a wallpaper was chosen to make a room
fashionable, to complement its architecture and provide a unifying
background for its furnishings. Once applied to the wall,
however, wallpaper became a part of the structure. 1 Unlike carpets,
textiles and other furnishings, wallpaper could seldom be
removed and incorporated into another decorative scheme.
Although the first thing a new owner usually did was to personalise
by redecorating, removing or covering up the evidence
of previous inhabitants, 2 it is surprising how many examples
of historic wallpapers can still be seen in situ or in museums.
There are multiple reasons why many examples of historic
wallpapers have survived, for example they were either preserved
consciously, were pasted over and have thus survived
under other decorative layers or were collected by individuals
or various institutions.
Ideally wallpaper was supposed to form a unified structure
with other decorative details of interiors. It can provide the contemporary
researcher with information about materials, patterns
and different printing methods, but also about the functions of
rooms, preferences of previous inhabitants, their social status,
financial situation and prevailing fashions. Thus it is essential to
handle a wallpaper within the context of its original surroundings,
and an interior together with the wall decoration.
Conservation of wallpapers can be roughly divided into
two parts: conservation of individual wallpaper samples (fragments
and intact objects) stored in museums, and conservation
of wallpapers preserved in interiors. Separate samples can be
handled as individual objects: they can be transported from one
place to another, stored in a relatively small space and exhibited
whenever necessary. However, an object that has been
1
Richard C. Nylander, Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings. A Guide for
Selecting Reproduction Fabrics (New Yersey: Preservation Press, John Wiley & Sons,
Inc., 2005), 11.
2
Christine Woods, introduction to Walls Are Talking: Wallpaper, Art and Culture, by Gill
Saunders, Dominique Heyse-Moore, Trevor Keeble (London: KWS Publishers, 2010),
XIII.
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