Old Time Wall Papers Part 8

VI

REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD PAPERS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VI

REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD PAPERS

It was in 1880 that Clarence Cook said: "One can hardly estimate the courage it would take to own that one liked an old-fashioned paper." How strange that sounds now, in 1905, when all the best manufacturers and sellers of wall-papers are reproducing the very old designs, for which they find a ready sale among the most fastidious searchers for the beautiful. One noted importer writes me:

"Yes, old time wall-papers are being revived, and no concern is taking more interest in the matter than ourselves. Many old designs, which had not been printed for thirty or forty years, have been taken up by us and done in colors to suit the taste of the period, and we find that few of the new drawings excel or even approach the old ones in interest.

"The glazed chintzes of the present day are all done over old blocks which had remained unused for half a century, and those very interesting fabrics are in the original colorings, it having been found that any new schemes of color do not seem to work so well."

Sending recently to a leading Boston paper store for samples for my dining-room, and expressing no desire for old patterns, I received a reproduction of the paper on the hall of the old Longfellow house at Portland, Maine, and a design of small medallions of the real antique kind,--a shepherdess with her sheep and, at a little distance, a stiff looking cottage, presumably her abode, set on a shiny white ground marked with tiny tiles.

In fact, there is a general revival of these old designs, the original blocks often being used for re-printing. Go to any large store in any city to-day, where wall-papers are sold, and chintzes and cretonnes for the finest effects in upholstery. You will be shown, first, old-fashioned landscape papers; botanically impossible, but cheerful baskets of fruits and flowers; or panels, with a pretty rococo effect of fairy-like garlands of roses swung back and forth across the openwork of the frame at each side, and suspended in garlands at top and bottom after French modes of the Louis XIV., XV. or XVI. periods. They are even reproducing the hand woven tapestries of Gobelin of Paris, during the latter part of the reign of Louis XIV., when French art was at its height.

In London _t.i.t-Bits_, I recently found something apropos: "'Here,' said a wall-paper manufacturer, 'are examples of what we call tapestry papers. They are copied exactly from the finest Smyrna and Turkish rugs, the colors and designs being reproduced with startling fidelity. We have men ransacking all Europe, copying paintings and mural decorations of past centuries. Here is the pattern of a very beautiful design of the time of Louis XVI., which we obtained in rather a curious way. One of our customers happened to be in Paris last summer, and being fond of inspecting old mansions, he one day entered a tumble-down chateau, which once belonged to a now dead and long forgotten Marquise. The rooms were absolutely in a decaying condition, but in the salon the wall-paper still hung, though in ribbons. The pattern was so exquisite in design, and the coloring, vivid still in many places, so harmonious, that he collected as many portions as he could and sent them to us to reproduce as perfectly as possible.

"We succeeded beyond his best hopes, and the actual paper is now hanging on the walls of a West End mansion. We only manufactured sufficient to cover the ball-room, and it cost him two pounds a yard, but he never grumbled, and it was not dear, considering the difficulty we had."

An article in the _Artist_ of London, September, 1898, by Lindsay P.

b.u.t.terfield, describes a wonderful find of old paper and its restoration:

"Painted decoration, whether by hand or stencil, was, no doubt, the immediate forerunner of paper hangings. The earliest reference to paper hangings in this country is to be found in the inventory taken at 'the monasterye of S. Syxborough in the Ile of Shepey, in the Countie of Kent, by Syr Thomas Cheney, Syr William Hawle, Knyghts and Antony Slewtheger, Esquyer, the XXVII day of Marche, in XXVII the yeare of our Soveraigne Lorde, Kyng Henrye the VIII, of the goods and catall belongyng to sayde Monastery.'

"In this very interesting doc.u.ment, a minutely descriptive list of the ornaments, furniture and fittings of the nuns' chambers is given. We find from this that, in place of the 'paynted clothes for the hangings of the chamber,' mentioned in most of the entries, under the heading of Dame Margaret Somebody's chamber is set down 'the chamber hangings of painted papers.'

"Wall-papers of Charles II.'s reign, and later, are still in existence; those at Ightham Mote, Kent, are well known instances.

"But so far as the writer is aware, the accompanying reproductions represent the oldest wall-papers now existing in England. They were found during the restoration of a fifteenth century timber-built house, known as 'Borden Hall' or the 'Parsonage Farm,' in the village of Borden, near Sittingbourne, Kent.

"The design marked 'A' was discovered in small fragments when the Georgian battening and wainscoats were removed in the first floor bed-room of the east front, in the oldest part of the house. These fragments showed that the tough paper had been originally nailed with flat-headed nails to the dried clay 'daubing' or plaster, with which the s.p.a.ces between the timber uprights of the walls were filled in; the timbers themselves were painted a dark blue-grey, and a border of the same framed the strips of wall-paper. Owing to the walls having been battened out nearly two centuries ago, these fragments of a really striking design have been preserved to us.

"The design of 'B' was also found on the first floor, in the rear portion of the house. It had been pasted, in the modern manner, onto a large plaster surface. The walls on which it was found had been re-plastered over the original plastering and paper and thus the latter was preserved in perfect condition. The design and quality of the paper, and the mode of its attachment, point to a date of about 1650. 'A' is probably of an earlier date (say 1550-1600) and is very thick and tough.

The ornament is painted in black on a rich vermilion ground, and the flower forms are picked out in a bright turquoise blue. 'B' is much more modern looking, both in texture and design, and in both is very inferior to 'A.'

"Its coloring is meagre compared with the other, the ornament being printed in black on white paper, and the flower forms roughly dabbed with vermilion. The character of the design in both cases seems referable to Indian influence; possibly they were the work of an Indian artist, and were cut as blocks for cotton printing, an impression being taken off on paper and hung on the walls. The house is in course of restoration under the superintendence of Mr. Philip M. Johnston, architect, to whom I am indebted for some of the particulars above given. To the owner of Borden Hall, Lewis Levy, Esq., I am also indebted for permission to publish the designs which I have reproduced in fac-simile from the original fragments. It is hoped shortly to hang the walls in the old manner with the reproduced papers."

I have copied from an 1859 edition of _Rambles about Portsmouth_, a strange story of the restoration of frescoes in the old Warner house at Portsmouth, New Hampshire:

"At the head of the stairs, on the broad s.p.a.ce each side of the hall windows, there are pictures of two Indians, life size, highly decorated and executed by a skillful artist. These pictures have always been on view there, and are supposed to represent some Indian with whom the original owner traded in furs, in which business he was engaged. In the lower hall of the house are still displayed the enormous antlers of an elk, a gift from these red men.

"Not long since, the s.p.a.cious front entry underwent repairs; there had acc.u.mulated four coatings of paper. In one place, on removing the under coating, the picture of a horse was discovered by a little girl. This led to further investigation; the horse of life size was developed; a little further work exhumed Governor Phipps on his charger. The process of clearing the walls was now entered upon in earnest, as if delving in the ruins of Pompeii.

"The next discovery was that of a lady at a spinning wheel (ladies span in those days!) who seems interrupted in her work by a hawk lighting among the chickens.

"Then came a Scripture scene; Abraham offering up Isaac; the angel, the ram, and so on. There is a distant city scene, and other sketches on the walls, covering perhaps four or five hundred square feet. The walls have been carefully cleaned, and the whole paintings, evidently the work of some clever artist, are now presented in their original beauty.

"No person living had any knowledge of the hidden paintings; they were as novel to an old lady of eighty, who had been familiar with the house from her childhood, as to her grand-daughter who discovered the horse's foot. The rooms are furnished with panelled walls and the old Dutch tiles still decorate the fire-place."

It is gratifying to note that as these old frescoes and wall-papers are ruthlessly destroyed by those unaware of their value (which will constantly increase), there are those who insist on their preservation and reproduction. President Tucker of Dartmouth College, for instance, has forbidden the removal of the Bay of Naples landscape from the walls of what was formerly the library of Professor Sanborn at Hanover, New Hampshire. The house is now used as a dormitory, but that paper is treated with decided reverence.

Reproduction of a fine paper worn, soiled and torn is an expensive matter, but those who realize their beauty order them if the price per roll is six or ten dollars. One of the most delightful papers of the present season is one copied from a French paper originally on the walls of a Salem house and known to have been there for over one hundred years. It is charming in design, with landscapes and flowers, twenty-eight different colors in all, and that means much when it is understood that every color must be printed from a different block when the paper is made.

The paper is brilliant in effect, with many bright colored flowers, pink hollyhocks in a warm rose shade, purple morning glories, some blue blossoms and two different water scenes set deep into the ma.s.s of flowers, the scenes themselves of delicate tones and wonderful perspective. The original paper was in pieces twenty inches wide by twenty-eight long, which shows it to be very old. This reproduction will be seen on the walls in houses of Colonial style in Newport this summer.

Yes, summer tourists are looking up old walls to gaze at with admiration. Many have found a Mecca in the Cleasby Place at Waterford, Vermont. Hardly a summer Sunday pa.s.ses without a wagon load of persons going from Littleton towards the Connecticut River on a pilgrimage to Waterford and the Cleasby House. This house is said to be one of only three in New England which possess a certain wonderful old paper of strange design. The paper, a combination of brown and cream, bears scenes that evidently found their origin in foreign countries, but there are diverse opinions as to the nation whose characteristics are thereon depicted so realistically. An old house at Rockville, Ma.s.sachusetts, still boasts this same paper, while the third example is on the walls of the Badger homestead, described on page 77. Plates XLVIII to L give scenes from these papers.

The Cleasby house was regarded, in the olden times, as the great mansion in this locality. There was nothing finer than the residence in any of the surrounding towns. The structure was erected by Henry Oakes, an old-time settler in Northern Vermont, whose relatives still reside near by. The paper was put on at the time the house was built and cost one hundred dollars. A paper-hanger came up from Boston to put it on properly, and this cost the owner an extra forty dollar check. In those days, the coming of a paper-hanger from Boston was regarded quite in the light of an event, and a hundred dollars expended for wall-paper stamped a man as a capitalist.

The house is still well preserved and shows no suggestion of being a ruin, although approaching the century mark. The present owner has been offered a large sum for this beautiful old paper, but wisely prefers to hold her treasure.

Paper-hangers to-day are returning, in some cases, to the hand-printing of fine papers, because they insist that there are some advantages in the old method to compensate for the extra work. To go back a bit, the earliest method of coloring paper hangings was by stencilling. A piece of pasteboard, with the pattern cut out on it, was laid on the paper, and water colors were freely applied with a brush to the back of the pasteboard, so that the colors came through the openings and formed the pattern on the paper. This process was repeated several times for the different colors and involved a great expenditure of labor. It was replaced by the method of calico-printing, which is now generally used in the manufacture of wall-paper, that is, by blocks and later by rollers. And why, you naturally ask, this return to the slow and laborious way?

Mr. Rottman, of the London firm of Alexander Rottman & Co., a high authority on this theme, in an able lecture given at his studio in London, explains the reasons in a way so clear that any one can understand. He says:

"In an age where needles are threaded by machinery at the rate of nearly one per second; where embroideries are produced by a machine process which reverses the old method in moving the cloth up to fixed needles; where Sunlight Soap is shaped, cut, boxed, packed into cases, nailed up, labelled, and even sent to the lighters by machinery, so that hand labour is almost entirely superseded; it seems odd and, in fact, quite out of date and uncommercial to print wall-papers entirely by hand process.

"The up-to-date wall-paper machine turns out most wonderful productions. It is able to imitate almost any fabric; tapestries, Gobelins, laces, and even tries to copy artistic stencilling in gradated tints. It manages to deceive the inartistic buyer to a large extent, in fact, there is hardly any fabric that the modern demand for 'sham' does not expect the wall-paper machine to imitate.

"However, in spite of all these so-called achievements, the modest hand-printing table that existed at the time of wigs and snuff-boxes is still surviving more or less in its old-fashioned simple construction.

And why is this so?" He then explains why a hand-printed paper is always preferred to a machine paper by the person of taste, whose purse is not too slender. Seven reasons are given for their artistic superiority.

"1. Machine papers can be printed in thin colours only, which means a thin, loose colour effect.

"2. In machine papers the whole of the various colours are printed at one operation, one on the top of another. In hand-printed papers, no colours touch each other until dry, and so each colour remains pure.

"3. Large surfaces, such as big leaves, large flat flowers, broad stripes that have to be printed in one colour, are never successful in machines, wanting solidity of colour. Hand-printed papers run no such risk.

"4. The machine limits the variety of papers to the flat kind; to flat surfaces supplied by the paper mills in reels.

"5. Flaws, irregularities, and so on, when occurring in machine goods, run through many yards, owing to the necessary rapidity of printing, and the difficulty of stopping the machine; whilst every block repeat of pattern in the hand-printed goods is at once visible to the printer, who rectifies any defect before printing another impression, and so controls every yard.

"6. The hand-printed papers, being printed from wood blocks (only dots and thin lines subject to injury being inserted in bra.s.s) show more softness in the printing than papers printed from machine rollers that have to be made in bra.s.s.

"7. The preparation of getting the machine colours in position, and setting the machine ready for printing, necessitates the turning out of at least a ream, or a half ream (five hundred or two hundred and fifty rolls) at once; whilst the equivalent in hand-printing is fifty to sixty rolls. It often happens that the design of a machine paper is approved of, whilst the colourings it is printed in are unsuited to the scheme.

By the hand process, room quant.i.ties of even ten to fifteen pieces can be printed specially at from 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. advance in price, while the increase in cost for such a small quant.i.ty in machine paper would send up the price to ridiculous proportions."