PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Task of conservation. Case studies
4) to combine the wallpaper with a reconstruction up to
the height of 174 and mark the course of the framing
border either with a reconstruction or a strip of paper
in a matching neutral tone. The remaining area would
be covered with a wallpaper in a neutral tone. (Fig.
118) Before a final decision could be made, it was
necessary to take into account that wallpapers play an
aesthetic and decorative role in historic interiors, 411
and that conserving and exhibiting only the surviving
segments of the whole scheme would lead to a misinterpretation
of the decoration.
On the one hand, the goal of conservation is to reveal and preserve
an object’s true nature and true condition, 412 which suggested
the option of conserving the fragments of the surviving
wallpaper and exhibiting it as a large ruin. On the other hand,
according to the tautological point of view, the goal of conservation
is to facilitate the reading of an object, to make it understandable.
413 To allow for a better understanding of a historic
interior, one should preserve or restore it as an aesthetic whole.
This means that the object should be aesthetically appealing
and that it should reveal clear information about its decorative
properties. However, to create an aesthetic whole of a historic
interior, enough material about its former appearance should be
provided. In the case of the material found in the dining room
of the Puurmani manor, it was possible to re-create the whole.
Besides being aesthetically appealing, the whole would have an
educational function. By re-creating the whole or an easily legible
part of the historic wall decoration, it was possible to offer
the public a chance to perceive and appreciate a historic wall
cover as a part of an interior.
If the wallpaper were conserved and presented in fragments,
as a ruin, it could be understood and appreciated only
by an expert. But with the help of reproductions, it was possible
411
Ibid., 88.
412
Muñoz Viñas, Contemporary Theory of Conservation, 91.
413
Ibid., 99.
230