Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 217, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1918 — Decorative Wall Paper First Appeared in Europe During Seventeenth Century [ARTICLE]

Decorative Wall Paper First Appeared in Europe During Seventeenth Century

Among many other and useful beautiful things for which we are indebted to the Chinese, wall paper is not the least, notes a writer in the Pittsburgh Dispatch. This decorative paper for walls seems to have first appeared in Europe toward the end of the seventeenth century. It was brought to France by overseas traders, and. the. French immediately perceived the possibilities thus offered. The paper did not come in rolls, as we have it today, but in sheets about three and one-half feet wide by ten feet in length. Someof the finest grades were printed by hand and the cheaper grades from wooden blocks. The patterns represented animals, temples, warriors and all the other familiar figures of Chinese art. The French called these new wall coverings “pagoda papers,” and it soon became the fashion to have at least one or two rooms in every home of any pretensions finished with “pagoda pa-« pers.” Throughout the eighteenth century the custom gradually spread. Both in France and England there were adaptations of thjgjChinese idea. There is a record of wall paper in England as far back as the time of Henry Vlll, when the inventory of a monastery included "chamber hangings of painted papers.” There are now in existence examples of English wall paper from the reign of Charles EL Some of the early attempts in the manufacture of wall paper are highly interesting. Tapestries were the elegant wall coverings through the renaissance, as they have been during the middle ages. But tapestries were expensive and beyond the reach of ordinary persons. ’So a good citizen of Rouen named Le Francois hit upon the idea of imitating tapestries. He had fanciful drawings made in the tapestry style on large pieces of paper pasted together in about the size of a tapestry. Upon these drawings Le Francois spread a kind of mucilage and then sprinkled the mucilage with powdered wool in different colors. “Papier volute,” as it was called, then came into general usage.