PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Introduction
CHOICE OF TOPIC
The choice of the topic grew out of the troubling situation in
Estonia and the everyday work of the author as a paper conservator
specializing in the preservation of historic wallpapers. If
a wallpaper has lost its aesthetic appearance or physical unity,
a decision is often made to remove it from a wall and either
preserve it in an archive or throw it away. However, museums
and archives that store large numbers of fragile textile and wall
covering samples are facing various challenges, for instance difficulties
in storage and display. Archival objects need to be preserved
carefully in controlled environments and they require
considerable space if they are to be adequately displayed for the
public. 8 In addition, the fragile nature of the objects make it very
difficult to give the public visual access to the items in storage,
especially when they are spread over different locations. 9
In Estonia, there is no museum or archive which houses
wallpaper samples removed from their original locations. The
Estonian History Museum has only a few examples of modern
wallpapers produced in the 20th century and the above-mentioned
French panoramic paper. A large number of historic
wallpapers have been collected, or rather salvaged, by either
conservation companies, conservators or common people. Such
collections do not usually have any systematic order or proper
storage conditions, and they are not easily accessible. The
current situation has led the author to seek solutions to preserve
more historic material in original locations, which will permit
more detailed research, access for a wider public and appreciation
of historic wallpapers as integral parts of interiors.
Scientific articles dealing with the conservation of wallpaper
mainly focus on a certain object, preservation concept
or conservation method. No comparative approach on various
options of preserving historic wallpapers in interiors has been
written previously.
8
Julian J. Self, “Changing Papers – Saving Options’ in New Discoveries, New Research.
Papers from the International Wallpaper Conference at the Nordiska Museet,
Stockholm, 2007, ed. Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark (Stockholm: Nordiska Museet Förlag,
2009), 175.
9
Ibidem.
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