PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Task of conservation. Case studies
Under the Neo-Rococo panelling of the dressing room, a
large amount of wallpaper with chinoiserie motifs was found. Its
pattern was made up of four allegorical compositions, depicting
scenes of Chinese everyday life. (Fig. 108) The choice of wall covers
seemed to have been influenced by the 18th-century fashion
of decorating the private rooms of a female patron with chinoiserie
wall covers. Although only one panel had been removed
to exhibit the wallpaper, most of it seemed to have survived
basically intact. A fragment of a border and plain paper was
accidentally removed from the wall during construction work.
It revealed a tripartite decoration scheme, which consisted of
a filling, border and strip of plain paper. A similar scheme had
been used in the dining room of the Puurmani manor.
Since the author was responsible for the development of
the conservation concept and the treatment of the wallpaper in
the former dining room, the case study will focus on this particular
object.
More than 50 m 2 of wallpaper was found under a wooden
dado covering the lower part of the wall in the former dining
room. Although there was no documentation, it could be assumed
that the panelling had been attached to the wall in the 1920s,
when the manor was turned into a local school. The original plan
was to preserve the wooden panelling intact, with the wallpaper
exhibited within one segment of the panelling. However, since
the wallpaper was considered to be an exceptional object, all of
the panelling was removed.
The wallpaper had survived up to a height of 174 cm on
three of the four walls. Close examination revealed that the
walls were covered with two layers of wallpaper.
The older layer had been applied on the wall at the beginning
of the 1880s. (Fig. 109) It depicted a composition of hunting
trophies, including a bugle, a pouch for gunpowder, a grouse and
a head of a deer which had been adjusted into a half-drop pattern.
Since the surface of the wallpaper had been treated with
shellac, it had a shiny appearance similar to polished wood.
The upper decorative layer consisted of a wallpaper, a border
with matching corner pieces and a monochrome paper. (Fig. 110)
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