Illustration: Walter Crane. La Margarete frieze wallpaper design, 1876.
In 1876 Walter Crane produced a series of wallpaper designs under the single heading La Margarete. They were intended to be displayed at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia also in 1876. The Exposition was the first large scale international trade gathering of its kind in the United States. The British were well represented at the Exposition and had examples from both the industrial and decorative arts.
Crane's La Margarete wallpaper designs were based on a poem said to have been written by Geoffrey Chaucer The Flower and the Leaf. The wallpaper came in a number of guises including frieze, dado and field pattern work. The frieze section of the design is the first illustrated example shown in this article. It originally had six classically styled figures which included Alcestis and the god of love. The six figures were placed within the design piece so as to appear as caryatids holding up the top layer of the frieze. There was originally an alternative and simplified frieze that consisted of a design using images of doves, which is not included here.
Illustration: Walter Crane. La Margarete dado wallpaper design, 1876.
The dado, which is the next illustration shown, also used doves and consisted of flying and sitting birds, with equally spaced lily plants. There was also included a ceiling wallpaper which is not shown here. This consisted of doves and olive branches, although apparently the ceiling paper did not work quite as well as the other pieces, at least in some critics eyes, because the design was split into quite definite squares which seemed over emphasised. However, as there doesn't seem to be any available examples of the ceiling paper immediately available, it is debateable as to whether it worked or not.
The last part of the decorative ensemble that was La Margarete was the standard or field wallpaper. The two last examples show in fact two different versions of this field paper. One has a number of words written across the paper including the word Margarete. However, the second example is clear of wording and just has the examples of stylised flowering, ribbon and simplified partial wreaths. Either the wording was a personal taste issue, or one version was released sometime after the other.
Illustration: Walter Crane. La Margarete field wallpaper design, 1876.
What is interesting is the number of different versions and parts that went to make up one decorative wallpaper scheme. In its largest state, Walter Crane would have produced two different versions of both a frieze and field wallpaper, and would have also have included both a ceiling and dado design. Although La Margarete was to all intents and purposes a status wallpaper that was produced to reflect the level and standard that the decorative arts had reached in Britain, and was used for both the benefit of the American and international audience, it also goes to show the level of sophistication and pervasiveness that wallpaper had reached, particularly within the domestic interior.
Wallpapers during the last half of the nineteenth century dominated interiors and covered practically all of the available wall and ceiling space. However, it is interesting to note that wallpaper itself was divided into a number of styles and formats for different areas of a room. This would inevitably have broken up any temptation to cover five sides of a room, four walls and a ceiling, with the exact same pattern. Considering that it could take upwards of at least four separate wallpaper patterns to decorate a domestic room, it is no wonder that wallpaper was seen during this era as being both indispensable and an increasingly refined and urbane choice of decorative pattern work. That a large number of artists, designers and architects were drawn into the industry through the commission of wallpaper design goes to show the status that wallpaper held at least during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Illustration: Walter Crane. La Margarete field wallpaper design, 1876.
Walter Crane himself saw his wallpaper design output as one of the chief successes within his design career. He was even stated to have said that if he hadn't first produced illustration work for children's books, he would have become a full time wallpaper designer. That this form of decoration has largely fallen out of favour with the contemporary world does not negate the fact that it was an important element of the decorative arts in both Europe and North America. For much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it developed in both sophistication and status. To many textile designers it became a valuable extra income and was often interchangeable with textile pattern work, which is why it is still often connected with the subject of textile design.
Reference links:
The Art & Illustration of Walter Crane
Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in Britis)
The Baby's Own Aesop (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)
Flora's Feast: A Fairy's Festival of Flowers
Illustrations and Ornamentation from The Faerie Queene (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)
Floral Fantasy - In An Old English Garden
Frog Prince - In Yellow by Walter Crane 12.00X18.00. Art Poster Print
Walter Crane as a Book Illustrator
The art of Walter Crane
NEPTUNE'S HORSES BY WALTER CRANE CANVAS REPRODUCTION
Line & Form
The Earth and Spring by Walter Crane 10.00X4.13. Art Poster Print
