Illustration: Turner & Sons. Imitation moulding wallpaper design, 1849.
The first half of the nineteenth century saw a rise in the popularity of imitation wallpapers. These were wallpaper designs that were created specifically to portray the illusion that they were either types of materials or a form of decoration, which they clearly were not. Therefore, many of these wallpapers created an effect of a pretence to marble and other stonework, as well as a number of expensive imported woods. Our modern day equivalent would probably be laminate flooring, which gives the impression from a distance of solid wood floors, but clearly on closer inspection is just a photograph of a wood effect pasted onto pressed wood dust.
As to the nineteenth century decorative effects themselves, moulding styles usually based on a classical theme, were particularly fashionable. It seems unlikely that these imitation moulding wallpapers would have actually fooled anyone into believing that they were originals, but perhaps that was never their real intention. It seems likely that they were intended to give an ambience, rather than to be dishonest. In the hands of professional decorators these imitation wallpaper themes could prove very effective. However, some customers when deciding to take on their own decorative schemes, either through lack of funds or a misguided appreciation of their own decorative skills, did use them sometimes in staggering degrees of excess. They could be found in some homes framing the frames of paintings and the individual panels of doors. They were also used to border every conceivable wall and ceiling surface, even producing geometric patterns on ceilings, which gave the altogether disconcerting effect of outlining everything with a bold pen or brush.
The two pieces illustrating this article were produced by the English company Turner & Sons in 1849. They are representations of standard Greek style stucco moulding that could have been found in any Georgian or early Victorian interior and are therefore part of the general Georgian theme rather than that of the later Victorian. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, many of these imitation wallpapers were frowned on as being deliberately illusional or at least misrepresentations of reality. However, this did not stop the concept of imitation decoration as the large and complex trade in paint effects became extremely fashionable. The effects of both stone and wood were endlessly copied in different types of paint effect, on walls, ceilings, doors, windows and furniture. That one of the most popular paint effect techniques was the illusional representation of marble, perhaps says much about the later Victorian era.
Illustration: Turner & Sons. Imitation moulding wallpaper design, 1849.
Styles were often different within wallpapers themselves, with paper designs that was to be seen at a closer level were usually much more complex than those that were to be seen from a greater distance such as ceiling or near ceiling height. These imitation wallpapers sometimes gave the design reform movement great difficulty as many were against any form of obvious dishonesty or illusional form. That these decorative designs did both left some critics in no doubt as to their dubious intentions and purpose. However, other critics saw these decorative wallpaper effects as merely giving an ambience without the intention of deceit, and were therefore perfectly acceptable for interior use. To go back to our own contemporary analogy of laminate flooring, does the laminate try to portray itself as a solid wood floor, or does it instead give an overall ambience that would be appreciative of a room with a solid wood floor, while still being obvious to everyone that it was a laminate.
One thing that is sure is the fact that imitation wallpaper and paint effects were around for a long time before the mid nineteenth century and are still very much with us in the twenty first.
Further reading links:
Fabrics and Wallpapers: Twentieth-Century Design
Wall Papers for Historic Buildings: A Guide to Selecting Reproduction Wallpapers
Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends
Wallpaper, its history, design and use,
Fabrics and Wallpapers: Design Source Book
Wallpaper (Historic Houses Trust Collection)
Wallpaper and the Artist: From Durer to Warhol
French Scenic Wallpaper 1795-1865
Landscape Wallcoverings (Cooper Hewitt National Design)
Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings
Pattern Design: Period Design Source Book
The Papered Wall: The History, Patterns and Techniques of Wallpaper, Second Edition
Wallpaper in Interior Decoration
Wallpaper: The Ultimate Guide
London Wallpapers: Their Manufacture and Use 1690-1840 (Revised Edition)
Victorian Wallpaper Designs (Internatinal Design Library)
Twentieth-Century Pattern Design
Wallpaper in America: From the Seventeenth Century to World War I
Wallpaper, Its History, Design and Use; With Frontispiece in Colour and Numerous Illustrations From Photographs
