PRESERVATION OF WALLPAPERS AS PARTS OF INTERIORS

Historic types of wallpaper and decorative schemes of interiors
most dominant type by the turn of the century. Historical photos
show interiors of manors, rectories, middle-class interiors and
public rooms of student corporations. In finer interiors, wallpapers
were attached to the ceiling-cornice and combined with a
painted ceiling, as in the Sagadi manor, a parlour in the Estonian
Literary Museum, a hall of the student corporation “Estonia”,
the Noarootsi rectory, a hall of the Padise manor (Fig. 58), an
enfilade of the Koluvere manor (Fig. 59) and elsewhere. At the
beginning of the 20th century, the borders became gradually
narrower and were attached considerably lower than before,
making the ceilings appear higher.
At the beginning of the 20th century more attention was
paid to the design of domestic environments and common products
in Estonia. At that time historicism and eclecticism were still
dominant in local architecture. 162 Art Nouveau, which reached
Estonia after 1904, was most commonly used in progressive,
fashion-conscious manorial and rich bourgeois interiors. The Art
Nouveau wallpapers can be divided into two categories. They
have either large floral patterns in light colours or sparse, slightly
geometric patterns resembling the designs of Charles Rennie
Machintoch. Wallpapers with Art Nouveau designs have been
found in both manors and middle class residences in towns. A
large number of Art Nouveau wallpapers have been found, for
example, in the Juuru rectory, and in wooden middle-class residences
in Kadriorg, Kesklinn, Põhja-Tallinn and the Old Town
of Tallinn.
Among the German-speaking community, gradually more
attention was paid to dwellings; more precisely, private residences,
neighbourhood villas and country houses became the focus of
attention. 163 Tallinn experienced rapid growth at the end of the
19th century with the increase in industry and the opening of a
railway connection between St. Petersburg and Tallinn. By 1914
the population of Tallinn had doubled. The Estonian-speaking
162
Sirje Helme and Jaak Kangilaski, Lühike eesti kunsti ajalugu (Tallinn: Kirjastus Kunst,
1999), 79.
163
Ants Hein, “Mõisate vananaistesuvi”in Eesti kunsti ajalugu, 5 1900–1940, ed. by Krista
Kodres, Mart Kalm and Elo Lutsepp (Tallinn: Eesti Kunstiakadeemia, Kultuurileht, 2010),
51.
98