Chapter I: Front Matter

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OLD TIME WALL PAPERS

WE HAVE PRINTED 75 SIGNED AND NUMBERED COPIES OF THIS BOOK ON FRENCH JAPAN PAPER, AND 975 NUMBERED COPIES ON AMERICAN PLATE PAPER. THE TYPE HAS BEEN DISTRIBUTED. NUMBER.

OLD TIME WALL PAPERS

AN ACCOUNT OF THE PICTORIAL PAPERS
ON OUR FOREFATHERS' WALLS

WITH A STUDY OF THE

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF WALL
PAPER MAKING AND DECORATION

KATE SANBORN

GREENWICH CONNECTICUT
THE LITERARY COLLECTOR PRESS
NEW YORK
1905

CLIFFORD & LAWTON
19 UNION SQUARE WEST, NEW YORK CITY
_SOLE AGENTS_

A. S. C.

THE CHATELAINE OF ELM BANK

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

If a book has ever been written on this subject it has been impossible to discover; and to get reliable facts for a history of the origin and development of the art of making wall-papers has been a serious task, although the result seems scanty and superficial. Some friends may wonder at the lack of fascinating bits of gossip, stories of rosy romance and somber tragedy in connection with these papers. But those who chatted, danced, flirted, wept or plotted in the old rooms are long since dust, and although the "very walls have ears" they have not the gift of speech. But my collection of photographs is something entirely unique and will increase in value every year. The numerous photographers, to whom I have never appealed in vain, are regarded by me as not only a skillful but a saintly class of men.

I am greatly indebted to Miss Mary M. Brooks of Salem and Miss Mary H. Buckingham of Boston for professional assistance. Many others have most kindly helped me by offers of photographs and interesting facts concerning the papers and their histories. But I am especially indebted to Mrs. Frederick C. Bursch, who has given much of her time to patient research, to the verification or correction of doubtful statements, and has accomplished a difficult task in arranging and describing the photographs. Without her enthusiastic and skillful assistance, my collection and text would have lacked method and finish.

To the many, both acquaintances and strangers, who have volunteered assistance and have encouraged when discouragement was imminent, sending bracing letters and new-old pictures, I can only quote with heartfelt thanks the closing lines of the verse written by Foote, the English actor, to be posted conspicuously to attract an audience to his benefit--

Like a grate full of coals I'll glow
A great full house to see;
And if I am not grateful, too,
A great fool I shall be.

CONTENTS

I Page

FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS 1

PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART 23

III

EARLIEST WALL PAPERS IN AMERICA 41

WALL PAPERS IN HISTORIC HOMES 61

NOTES FROM HERE AND THERE 85

REVIVAL AND RESTORATION OF OLD WALL PAPERS 103

LIST OF PLATES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATES

Old English Figure paper--in Colors. Plate I

Rural Scenes--Detail in Colors. II

French paper, Watteau Style--Detail in Colors. III

Adventures of a Gallant--Reduction. IV

Adventures of a Gallant--Detail in Colors. V

Racing paper--Timothy Dexter House. VI

The Bayeux Tapestry--Burial of Edward. VII

The Bayeux Tapestry--Harold hearing News. VIII

Oldest English paper--Borden Hall, "A." IX

Borden Hall paper, Design "B." X

Early English Pictorial paper--Chester, Eng. XI

Old Chinese paper, Cultivation of Tea--Dedham, Mass. XII-XIV

Early American fresco--Westwood, Mass. XV-XVIII

Early Stencilled paper--Nantucket, Mass. XIX

A Peep at the Moon--Nantucket, Mass. XX

Hand-colored Figures, repeated--Claremont, N. H. XXI

Nature Scenes, repeated--Salem, Mass. XXII

The Alhambra, repeated--Leicester, Mass. XXIII

Cathedral Views, repeated--Ware, Mass. XXIV

Cathedral Views, repeated on architectural background--Waltham,
Mass. XXV

Pictured Ruins, Hall and Stairway--Salem, Mass. XXVI

Birds of Paradise and Peacocks--Waltham, Mass. XXVII

Sacred to Washington--Mourning paper. XXVIII

Dorothy Quincy Wedding paper--Quincy, Mass. XXIX

The Pantheon--King's Tavern, Vernon, Conn. XXX

Canterbury Bells--Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Mass. XXXI

The First Railway Locomotive--Salem, Mass. XXXII

Rural Scene from same room. XXXIII

Pizarro in Peru--Duxbury, Mass. XXXIV-V

Tropical Scenes--Peabody, Mass. XXXVI-VII

On the Bosporus--Montpelier, Vt. XXXVIII-IX

Oriental Scenes--Stockport, N. Y. XL-XLIII

Early Nineteenth Century Scenic paper--Deerfield, Mass. XLIV-V

Same Scenic paper, other examples--Warner, N. H., and Windsor, Vt.
XLVI-VII

Harbor Scene--Waterford, Vt., Gilmanton, N. H., and Rockville,
Mass. XLVIII

The Spanish Fandango--same paper. XLIX

Strolling Players--same paper. L

Rural Scenes--Ashland, Mass., and Marblehead. LI, LII

French Boulevard Scenes--Salem, Mass., and Nantucket, Mass.
LIII, LIV

Gateway and Fountain, with Promenaders. LV

Scenes from Paris--Salem, Mass., etc. LVI, LVII

Bay of Naples--Hanover, N. H., etc. LVIII-LXII

Cupid and Psyche--panelled paper. LXIII, LXIV

The Adventures of Telemachus--Taunton, Mass., etc. LXV-IX

Scottish Scenes--same paper. LXX

The Olympic Games--Boston, Mass. LXXI

A tribute to Homer--same paper. LXXII

The shrine of Vesta--same paper. LXXIII

Worship of Athene--same paper. LXXIV

Oblation to Bacchus--same paper. LXXV

Oblation to Bacchus and Procession before Pantheon--Keene, N. H.
LXXVI

The Lady of the Lake--Greenbush, Mass., and Portsmouth, N. H.
LXXVII-LXXX

The Seasons--Hanover, N. H. LXXXI-III

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Devil paper, Gore Mansion, Waltham, Mass. See end papers.

Devil paper, details, Pages viii, 19, 61

Mill and Boat Landing--Fairbanks House, Dedham, Mass. vii

Gallipoli Scenes--Knox Mansion, Thomaston, Me. ix, 23, 103

Adventures of Cupid--Beverly, Mass. xi, 116

Fisher Maidens--Draper House, N. H. x

Peasant Scene. xi

Hunters and Dog. xiv

The Gypsies--Stevens House, Methuen, Mass. 1

Bandbox (Stage-coach) and Cover--Spencer, Mass. 20

The Grape Harvest. 37

Torches and Censers--Thomaston, Me. 38

Bandbox, Volunteer Fire Brigade--Norwich, Conn. 58

Chariot Race--Detail of Olympic Games paper. 85

Horse Race--Newburyport, Mass. 100

FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS TO DECORATIVE PAPERS

FROM MUD WALLS AND CANVAS TENTS

TO DECORATIVE PAPERS

"How very interesting! Most attractive and quite unique! I supposed all such old papers had gone long ago. How did you happen to think of such an odd subject, and how ever could you find so many fine old specimens? Do you know where the very first wall-paper was made?"

These are faint echoes of the questions suggested by my collection of photographs of wall-papers of the past. The last inquiry, which I was unable to answer, stimulated me to study, that I might learn something definite as to the origin and development of the art of making such papers.

Before this, when fancying I had found a really new theme, I was surprised to discover that every one, from Plato and Socrates to Emerson, Ruskin and Spencer, had carefully gleaned over the same ground, until the amount of material became immense and unmanageable. Not so now. I appealed in vain to several public libraries; they had nothing at all on the subject. Poole's Index--that precious store-house of information--was consulted, but not one magazine article on my theme could be found. I then sent to France, England and Italy, and employed professional lookers-up of difficult topics; but little could be secured. The few who had studied paper hangings were very seldom confident as to positive dates and facts.

One would seem safe in starting with China, as paper was certainly invented there, and many of the earliest designs were of Chinese scenes; but the honor is also claimed for Japan and Persia and Egypt. It is difficult to decide in view of the varying testimony.

I was assured by a Japanese expert, who consulted a friend for the facts, that neither the Chinese nor the Japanese have ever used paper to cover their walls. At the present day, the inner walls of their houses are plastered white, and usually have a strip of white paper running around the bottom, about a foot and a half high.

On the other hand, Clarence Cook, in his book, _What Shall We Do With Our Walls?_, published in 1880, says as to the origin of wall-paper: "It may have been one of the many inventions borrowed from the East, and might be traced, like the introduction of porcelain, to the Dutch trade with China and Japan." And he finds that the Japanese made great use of paper, their walls being lined with this material, and the divisions between the rooms made largely, if not entirely, by means of screens covered with paper or silk. Japanese wall-paper does not come in rolls like ours, but in pieces, a little longer than broad, and of different sizes. He adds:

_PLATE II._

One of the cruder papers popular a hundred years ago; containing
three groups of figures engaged in rural occupations. Beside the
gray ground this paper contains eleven shades of color, roughly
applied, with little attention paid to register.

"What makes it more probable that our first European notion of wall-papers came from Japan, is the fact that the first papers made in Holland and then introduced into England and France, were printed in these small sizes [about three feet long by fifteen inches wide]. Nor was it until some time in the eighteenth century that the present mode of making long rolls was adopted. These early wall-papers were printed from blocks, and were only one of many modifications and adaptations of the block printing which gave us our first books and our first wood-cuts.

"The printing of papers for covering walls is said to have been introduced into Spain and Holland about the middle of the sixteenth century. And I have read, somewhere, that this mode of printing the patterns on small pieces of paper was an imitation of the Spanish squares of stamped and painted leather with which the grandees of Spain covered their walls, a fashion that spread all over Europe.

"We are told that wall-paper was first used in Europe as a substitute for the tapestry so commonly employed in the middle ages, partly as a protection against the cold and damp of the stone walls of the houses, partly, no doubt, as an ornament."

But here is something delightfully positive from A. Blanchet's _Essai sur L'Histoire du Papier et de sa Fabrication_, Exposition retrospective de la Papetier, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1900.

Blanchet says that paper was invented in China by Tsai Loon, for purposes of writing. He used fibres of bark, hemp, rags, etc. In 105 A. D. he reported to the government on his process, which was highly approved. He was given the honorary title of Marquis and other honors. The first paper book was brought to Japan from Corea, then a part of China, in 285. The conquest of Turkestan by the Arabs, through which they learned the manufacture of paper, came in the battle fought on the banks of the River Tharaz, in July, 751. Chinese captives brought the art to Samarcand, from which place it spread rapidly to other parts of the Arabian Empire. Damascus was one of the first places to receive it. In Egypt, paper began to take the place of papyrus in the ninth century, and papyrus ceased to be used in the tenth. The Arabian paper was made of rags, chiefly linen, and sized with wheat starch. European paper of the thirteenth century shows, under the microscope, fibres of flax and hemp, with traces of cotton. About 1400, animal glue was first used for sizing. The common belief that Arabian and early European paper was made of cotton is a mistake. There has never been any paper made of raw cotton, and cotton paper anywhere is exceptional. In 1145, when the troops of Abd el Mounin were about to attack the capital of Fez, the inhabitants covered the vault of the mihrab of the mosque with paper, and put upon this a coating of plaster, in order to preserve from destruction the fine carvings which are still the admiration of visitors. The mihrab of an Arabic mosque is a vaulted niche or alcove, in which the altar stands and towards which the worshippers look while they pray. This is probably the earliest approach to the use of wall-paper and shows the excellent quality of the paper.

Herbert Spencer states that "Dolls, blue-books, paper-hangings are lineally descended from the rude sculpture paintings in which the Egyptians represented the triumphs and worship of their god-kings." No doubt this is true, but the beginning of paper, and probably of wall-paper, was in China.

Paper made of cotton and other vegetable fibres by the Chinese was obtained by the Arabs in trade, through Samarcand. When they captured that city, in 704 A.D. they learned the process from Chinese captives there, and soon spread it over their empire. It was known as "Charta Damascena" in the Middle Ages, and was extensively made also in Northern Africa. The first paper made in Europe was manufactured by the Moors in Spain, at Valencia, Toledo, and Xativa. At the decline of Moorish power, the Christians took it up, but their work was not so good. It was introduced into Italy through the Arabs in Sicily; and the Laws of Alphonso, 1263, refer to it as "cloth parchment." The earliest documents on this thick "cotton" paper date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as a deed of King Roger of Sicily, dated 1102, shows. When made further north, other materials, such as rags and flax, were used. The first mention of rag paper, in a tract of Peter, Abbott of Cluny from 1122 to 1150, probably means woolen. Linen paper was not made until in the fourteenth century.

The Oriental papers had no water mark,--which is really a wire mark. Water-mark paper originated in the early fourteenth century, when paper-making became an European industry; and a considerable international trade can be traced by means of the water marks.

The French Encyclopædia corroborates Blanchet's statement that the common notion that the Arabic and early European papers were made of cotton is a mistake; the microscope shows rag and flax fibres in the earliest.

Frederic Aumonier says: "From the earliest times man has longed to conceal the baldness of mud walls, canvas tents or more substantial dwellings, by something of a decorative character. Skins of animals, the trophies of the chase, were probably used by our remote ancestors for ages before wall-paintings and sculptures were thought of. The extreme antiquity of both of these latter methods of wall decoration has recently received abundant confirmation from the valuable work done by the Egyptian Research Department, at Hierakonopolis, where wall-paintings have been discovered in an ancient tomb, the date of which has not yet been determined, but which is probably less than seven thousand years old; and by the discovery of ancient buildings under the scorching sand dunes of the great Sahara, far away from the present boundary line of habitable and cultivated land. The painted decorations on the walls of some of the rooms in these old-world dwellings have been preserved by the dry sand, and remain almost as fresh as they were on the day they left the hand of the artist, whose bones have long since been resolved into their native dust."

From the Encyclopædia Britannica I condense the long article on "Mural Decoration":

There is scarcely one of the numerous branches of decorative art which has not at some time or other been applied to the ornamentation of wall-surfaces.

I. Reliefs sculptured in marble or stone; the oldest method of wall decoration.

II. Marble veneer; the application of thin marble linings to wall surfaces, these linings often being highly variegated.

III. Wall linings of glazed bricks or tiles. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Moslems of Persia brought their art to great perfection and used it on a large scale, chiefly for interiors. In the most beautiful specimens, the natural growth of trees and flowers is imitated. About 1600 A. D., this art was brought to highest perfection.

IV. Wall coverings of hard stucco, frequently enriched with relief and further decorated with delicate paintings in gold and colors, as at the Alhambra at Granada and the Alcazar at Seville.

V. Sgraffito; a variety of stucco work used chiefly in Italy, from the sixteenth century down. A coat of stucco is made black by admixture of charcoal. Over this a second very thin coat of white stucco is laid. The drawing is made to appear in black on a white ground, by cutting away the white skin enough to show the black undercoat.

VI. Stamped leather; magnificent and expensive, used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in Italy, Spain, France, and later in England.

VII. Painted cloth. In _King Henry IV._, Falstaff says his soldiers are "slaves, as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth." Canvas, painted to imitate tapestry, was used both for ecclesiastical and domestic hangings. English mediæval inventories contain such items as "stayned cloth for hangings"; "paynted cloth with stories and batailes"; and "paynted cloths of beyond-sea-work." The most important existing example is the series of paintings of the Triumph of Julius Caesar, now in Hampton Court. These designs were not meant to be executed in tapestry, but were complete as wall-hangings. Godon, in _Peinture sur Toile_, says: "The painted canvasses kept at the Hôtel Dieu at Rheims were done in the fifteenth century, probably as models for woven tapestries. They have great artistic merit. The subjects are religious." Painted cloths were sometimes dyed in a manner similar to those Indian stuffs which were afterwards printed and are now called chintzes. It is recorded somewhere, that the weaving industry was established at Mulhouse (Rixheim) by workers who left Rheims at a time when laws were passed there to restrict the manufacture of painted cloths, because there was such a rage for it that agriculture and other necessary arts were neglected.

VIII. Printed hangings and wall-papers. The printing of various textiles with dye-colors and mordaunts is probably one of the most ancient of the arts. Pliny describes a dyeing process employed by the ancient Egyptians, in which the pattern was probably formed by printing from blocks. The use of printed stuffs is of great antiquity among the Hindus and Chinese, and was practised in Western Europe in the thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier. The South Kensington Museum has thirteenth-century specimens of block-printed linen made in Sicily, with beautiful designs. Later, toward the end of the fourteenth century, a great deal of block-printed linen was made in Flanders and was imported largely into England.

Tapestries as wall-hangings were used in the earliest times, and, as tiles and papers were copied from them, they must be spoken of here. One remarkable example of tapestry from a tomb in the Crimea is supposed by Stephani to date from the fourth century before Christ. Homer frequently describes tapestry hangings, as when he alludes to the cloth of purple wool with a hunting scene in gold thread, woven by Penelope for Ulysses. Plutarch, in his Life of Themistocles, says, "Speech is like cloth of Arras, opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as in packs."

The oldest tapestry now in existence is the set of pieces known as the Bayeux Tapestry, preserved in the library at Bayeux, near Caen, in France, and said to be the work of Matilda, Queen of William the Conqueror. These pieces measure two hundred and thirty-one feet long and twenty inches wide.

It is generally believed, and stated as a fact in the various guide-books, that the Bayeux Tapestry was the work of Queen Matilda, the consort of the Conqueror, assisted by her ladies. At that time, English ladies were renowned for their taste and skill in embroidery. Their work was known throughout Europe as English work. The Conquest having brought the people of Normandy and England into close intercourse, it is pointed out that on William's return to France, he must have taken with him many Saxons, with their wives and daughters, in honorable attendance upon him; and that these ladies might have helped Matilda and her companions in making this historical piece of needlework. Many historians, however, incline to the opinion that Matilda and her ladies had nothing to do with the tapestry, although it was done during her lifetime.

It is amusing to note how Miss Strickland, in her _Lives of the Queens of England_, takes up the cudgels in a very vigorous manner on behalf of Matilda's claim:

"The archæologists and antiquaries would do well to direct their intellectual powers to more masculine objects of enquiry, and leave the question of the Bayeux Tapestry (with all other matters allied to needle-craft) to the decision of the ladies, to whose province it belongs. It is a matter of doubt whether one out of the many gentlemen who have disputed Matilda's claim to that work, if called upon to execute a copy of either of the figures on canvas, would know how to put in the first stitch."

But Dr. Daniel Rock, in his exhaustive work on Tapestries, casts the gravest doubts upon the tradition that this needlework owed its origin to Matilda and her ladies: "Had such a piece anywise or ever belonged to William's wife, we must think that, instead of being let stray away to Bayeux, toward which place she bore no particular affection, she would have bequeathed it, like other things, to her beloved church at Caen."

The author points out that there is no mention of the tapestry in the Queen's will, while two specimens of English needlework, a chasuble and a vestment, are left to the Church of the Trinity at Caen, the beautiful edifice founded by her at the time when her husband founded the companion church of St. Etienne in the same city. In fact, Dr. Rock thinks the tapestry was made in London, to the order of three men quite unknown to fame, whose names appear more than once on the tapestry itself. Coming over with the Conqueror, they obtained wide possessions in England, as appears from the Doomsday Book, and would naturally have wished to make a joint offering to the cathedral of their native city. In support of this view, it is shown that the long strip of needlework exactly fits both sides of the nave of the cathedral at Bayeux, where until recent times it has hung.

The tapestry has undergone so many vicissitudes that it is a matter for wonder that it has been preserved in such good condition for eight hundred years. At one time it was exhibited at the Hôtel de Ville, at Bayeux, fixed panorama-fashion on two rollers, so that it was at the disposal of the fingers as well as the eyes of the curious. When Napoleon was thinking of invading this country, he had the tapestry carried to the various towns of France and publicly exhibited, so as to arouse popular enthusiasm on behalf of his designs.

In 1871, when the Prussians were thought to be in dangerous proximity to Bayeux, the tapestry was taken down, enclosed in a metal cylinder, and buried in a secret place until the close of the war. Now it is kept in the Public Library in an upright glass case, which forms the sides of a hollow parallelogram, the tapestry being carried first round the outside and then round the inside space, so that every part of it is open to inspection, while it cannot be touched or mutilated. This valuable information is given by Mr. T. C. Hepworth.

In the Old Testament we find records of "hangings of fine twined linen" and "hangings of white cloth, of green, of blue, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple." Shakespeare has several allusions to tapestry: as, "fly-bitten tapestry"; "worm-eaten tapestry"; "covered o'er with Turkish tapestry"; "the tapestry of my dining chambers"; "it was hanged with tapestry of silk"; "in cypress chests my arras"; "hangings all of Tyrian tapestry."

Cardinal Wolsey's private accounts and inventories, still preserved, state that in 1552 he bought one hundred and thirty-two large pieces of Brussels tapestry, woven with Scriptural subjects and mostly made to order, so as to fit exactly the various wall spaces. Among the wall-pieces, "in addition to the numerous sacred subjects are mentioned mythological scenes, romances, historical pieces and hangings of verdure," the last being decorative work, in which trees and foliage formed the main design, with accessory figures engaged in hunting, hawking and the like.

We read in Gibbon's Rome that Charles the Sixth despatched, by way of Hungary, Arras tapestry representing the battles of the great Alexander. And Macaulay inquires, "Where were now the brave old hangings of Arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth?"

According to Shakespeare, the arras was found convenient to conceal eaves-droppers, those planning a frolic or plotting mischief; or for a hasty lunch, as in _The Woman Hater_, by Beaumont and Fletcher:

I have of yore made many a scrambling meal,
In corners, behind arrases, on stairs.

Arras was used precisely the same as a curtain; it hung on tenters or lines from the rafters or from some temporary stay, and was opened, held up, or drawn aside, as occasion required. The writers of the day frequently mentioned these wall-hangings. Evelyn, in his diary, 1641, says, "We were conducted to the lodgings, tapestry'd with incomparable arras."

Scott, in _The Lady of the Lake_, has this couplet:

In vain on gilded roof they fall,
And lighten up a tapestried wall.

And in _Waverley_ he speaks of "remnants of tapestried hangings, window curtains and shreds of pictures with which he had bedizened his tatters."

After the seventeenth century, these tapestries were used for covering furniture, as the seats and backs of sofas and arm chairs, desks and screens; and fire-screens covered with tapestry as beautiful as a painting were in vogue. In the _Comedy of Errors_ we recall this passage:

In the desk
That's covered o'er with Turkish tapestry
There is a purse of ducats.

Clarence Cook says: "There was a kind of tapestry made in Europe in the fifteenth century--in Flanders, probably--in which there were represented gentlemen and ladies, the chatelaine and her suite walking in the park of the chateau. The figures, the size of life, seem to be following the course of a slender stream. The park in which these noble folk are stiffly disporting is represented by a wide expanse of meadow, guiltless of perspective, stretching up to the top of the piece of stuff itself, a meadow composed of leaves and flowers--bluebells, daisies, and flowers without a name--giving the effect of a close mosaic of green, mottled with colored spots. On the meadow are scattered various figures of animals and birds--the lion, the unicorn, the stag, and the rabbit. Here, too, are hawks and parrots; in the upper part is a heron, which has been brought down by a hawk and is struggling with the victor, some highly ornamental drops of blood on the heron's breast showing that he is done for. And to return to the brook which winds along the bottom of the tapestry, it is curious to note that this part of the work is more real and directly natural in its treatment than the rest. The water is blue, and is varied by shading and by lines that show the movement of the stream; the plants and bushes growing along its borders are drawn with at least a conventional look of life, some violets and fleur-de-lis being particularly well done; and in the stream itself are sailing several ducks, some pushing straight ahead, others nibbling the grass along the bank, and one, at least, diving to the bottom, with tail and feet in the air."

The best authority on tapestries in many lands is the exhaustive work by Muntz, published in Paris, 1878-1884, by the Société anonyme de Publication Périodique--three luxuriously bound and generously illustrated volumes, entitled _Histoire Générale de la Tapisserie en Italie, en Allemagne, en Angleterre, en Espagne_.

We learn here that in 1630 Le François, of Rouen, incited by the Chinese colored papers imported by the missionaries, tried to imitate the silk tapestries of the wealthy in a cheaper substance. He spread powdered wool of different colors on a drawing covered with a sticky substance on the proper parts. This _papier velouté_, called _tontisse_ by Le François, was exported to England, where it became known as "flock paper." The English claim a previous invention by Jeremy Lanyer, who, in 1634, had used Chinese and Japanese processes. At any rate, the manufacture of flock papers spread in England and was given up in France. Only toward the middle of the eighteenth century was the making of real colored papers (_papier peints_) begun in France and England. The first factory was set up in 1746, but the work was not extended further until 1780, when it was taken up by the brothers George and Frederic Echardt.

Chinese picture papers were imported into France by Dutch traders and used to decorate screens, desks, chimney-pieces, etc., as early as the end of the seventeenth century. By the middle of the eighteenth, they were an important ornament of elegant interiors. In the list of the furniture given to Mlle. Desmares by Mlle. Damours, September 25, 1746, is a fire-screen of China paper, mounted on wood, very simple. On July 25, 1755, Lazare Duvaux delivered to Mme. de Brancas, to be sent to the Dauphiness, a sheet of China paper with very beautiful vases and flowers, for making which he charged thirty livres. April 6, 1756, he sold to the Countess of Valentinois, for one hundred and forty-four livres, six sheets of China paper, painted on gauze with landscapes and figures.

May 8, 1770, M. Marin advertised for sale in a Paris newspaper twenty-four sheets of China paper, with figures and gilt ornaments, ten feet high and three and one-half feet wide, at twenty-four livres a sheet; to be sold all together, or in lots of eight sheets each. By this time whole rooms were papered. July 15, 1779, an apartment in Paris was advertised to let, having a pretty boudoir with China paper in small figures representing arts and crafts, thirteen sheets, with a length of thirty-seven feet (horizontally) and height of eight feet ten inches, with gilt beaded moulding. Dec. 31, 1781, "For sale, at M. Nicholas's, China wall-paper, glazed, blue ground, made for a room eighteen feet square, with gilt moulding."

Mr. Aumonier says: "Notwithstanding the Chinese reputation for printing from wooden blocks from time immemorial, no specimens of their work produced by that process have ever come under the notice of the author, in public museums or elsewhere, and it is far more probable that early Chinese works imported into Europe were painted by hand, in imitation of the wondrous needlework, for which, through unknown ages, the Eastern peoples have been famous. A most perfect and beautiful example of this work, of Japanese origin, may be seen in the "Queen's palace at the Hague," called the _Huis-ten-Bosch_--the House-in-the-Wood. This is a magnificent composition of foliage and flowers, birds and butterflies, perfect in form and beauty of tint, worked in silks on a ground of _écru_ satin. It is composed of many breadths forming one picture, starting from the ground with rock-work, and finishing at the top of the wall with light sprays of flowers, birds, butterflies and sky; the colouring of the whole so judiciously harmonized as to be an object lesson of great value to any decorator, and worth traveling many miles to study."

I think that we may now safely say that China holds the honors in this matter. And as most of us grow a bit weary of continuous citations from cyclopedias, which are quoted because there is nothing less didactic to quote, and there must be a historical basis to stand on and start from, let us wander a little from heavy tomes and see some of the difficulties encountered in looking up old wall-papers to be photographed.

An American artist, who has made his home in Paris for years, looked over the photographs already collected, grew enthusiastic on the subject, and was certain he could assist me, for, at the Retrospective Exhibition held in that city in 1900, he remembered having seen a complete exhibition of wall-papers and designs from the beginning. Of course the dailies and magazines of that season would have full reports. "Just send over to Jack Cauldwell--you know him. He is now occupying my studio, and he will gladly look it up."

I wrote, and waited, but never received any response; heard later that he was painting in Algiers and apparently all the hoped-for reports had vanished with him. My famously successful searcher after the elusive and recondite gave up this fruitless hunt in despair. Other friends in Paris were appealed to, but could find nothing.

Then many told me, with confidence, that there must be still some handsome old papers in the mansions of the South. And I did my best to secure at least some bits of paper, to show what had been, but I believe nearly all are gone "down the back entry of time."

One lady, belonging to one of the best old families of Virginia, writes me, "My brother has asked me to write to you about wall-papers. I can only recall one instance of very old or peculiar papering in the South, and my young cousin, who is a senior in the Columbia School of Architecture and very keen on 'Colonial' details, tells me that he only knows of one. He has just been through tide-water Virginia, or rather, up the James and Rappahannock rivers, and he says those houses are all without paper at all, as far as he knows.

"At Charlestown, West Virginia, there is a room done in tapestry paper in classic style, the same pattern being repeated, but this is not old, being subsequent to 1840. The room that I have seen is wainscoted, as is the one at Charlestown, and has above the wainscoting a tapestry paper also in shades of brown on a white ground.

"The principal wall has a large classical design, with columns, ships and figures, not unlike the Turner picture of Carthage, as I remember it. This picture is not repeated, but runs into others. Whether each is a panel, or they are merged into one another by foliage, I am unable to recall. I know that there is a stag hunt and some sylvan scenes. It seemed as if the paper must have been made with just such a room in mind, as the patterns seemed to fit the spaces. As the room was the usual corner parlor common to Southern mansions, it was probably made for the type. I was told by a boarder in this house that the paper was old and there were similar papers in Augusta County. I do not know whether these are choice and rare instances, or whether they are numerous and plentiful in other sections."

All my responses from the South have been cordial and gracious and interesting, but depressing.

I hear, in a vague way, of papers that I really should have--in Albany and Baltimore. We all know of the papers in the Livingston and Jumel mansions; the former are copied for fashionable residences.

I heard of some most interesting and unusual papers in an old house in Massachusetts, and after struggling along with what seemed almost insurmountable hindrances, was at last permitted to secure copies. The owner of the house died; the place was to be closed for six months; then it was to be turned over to the church, for a parsonage, and I agonised lest one paper might be removed at once as a scandalous presentment of an unholy theme. I was assured that in it the Devil himself was caught at last, by three revengeful women, who, in a genuine tug-of-war scrimmage, had torn away all of his tail but a stub end. Finally I gained a rather grudging permit for my photographer to copy the papers--"if you will give positive assurance that neither house nor walls shall be injured in the slightest degree."

_PLATE III._

In abrupt contrast with the preceding specimen, this old French
paper is printed with great care and shows high artistic taste. The
eight well-composed groups of figures that form the complete design
are after the manner of Watteau; the coloring is rich but quiet.
Seventeen shades and colors were imposed on a brown ground, and the
black mesh-work added over all.

As the artist is a quiet gentleman--also an absolute abstainer--so that I could not anticipate any damage from a rough riot or a Bacchanalian revel, I allowed him to cross the impressive threshold of the former home of a Massachusetts governor, and the result was a brilliant achievement, as may be seen in the end papers of this book.

Sometimes when elated by a promise that a certain paper, eagerly desired, could be copied, I sent my man only to have the door held just a bit open, while he heard the depressing statement that madam had "changed her mind and didn't want the paper to be taken."

All this is just a reminder that it is not entirely easy to get at what is sure so soon to disappear. And I mourn that I did not think years ago of securing photographs of quaint and antique papers.

Man has been defined as "an animal who collects." There is no hobby more delightful, and in this hunt I feel that I am doing a real service to many who have not time to devote to the rather difficult pursuit of what will soon be only a remembrance of primitive days.

PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART

If we go far enough back in trying to decide the origin of almost any important discovery, we are sure to find many claimants for the honor. It is said, on good authority, that "paper-hangings for the walls of rooms were originally introduced in China." This may safely be accepted as correct. The Chinese certainly discovered how to make paper, then a better sort for wall hangings, and by Chinese prisoners it was carried to Arabia. Travellers taking the news of the art to their homes in various countries, it soon became a subject of general interest, and variations and inventions in paper manufacture were numerous.

We are apt to forget how much we owe to the Chinese nation--the mariners' compass, gun-powder, paper, printing by moveable types (a daily paper has been published in Pekin for twelve hundred years, printed, too, on silk). They had what we call The Golden Rule five hundred years before Christ was born. With six times the population of the United States, they are the only people in the world who have maintained a government for three thousand years.

The earliest papers we hear of anywhere were imported from China, and had Chinese or Indian patterns; coming first in small sheets, then in rolls. Some of the more elaborate kinds were printed by hand; others were printed from blocks. These papers, used for walls, for hangings, and for screens, were called "pagoda papers," and were decorated with flowers, symbolic animals and human figures.

The Dutch were among the most enterprising, importing painted hangings from China and the East about the middle of the sixteenth century. Perhaps these originated in Persia; the word "chintz" is of Persian origin, and the French name for its imitations was "perses."

From the Dutch, these imported hangings were soon carried to England, France, Germany and other Continental nations. Each nation was deadly jealous in regard to paper-making, even resorting, in Germany in 1390, to solemn vows of secrecy from the workman and threats of imprisonment for betrayal of methods. Two or three centuries later, the Dutch prohibited the exportation of moulds under no less a penalty than death.

The oldest allusion to printed wall-papers that I have found is in an account of the trial, in 1568, of a Dutch printer, Herman Schinkel of Delft, on the charge of printing books inimical to the Catholic faith. The examination showed that Schinkel took ballad paper and printed roses and stripes on the back of it, to be used as a covering for attic walls.

In the Library of the British Museum may be seen a book, printed in Low Dutch, made of sixty specimens of paper, each of a different material. The animal and vegetable products of which the workmen of various countries tried to manufacture paper would make a surprising list. In England, a paper-mill was set up probably a century before Shakespeare's time. In the second part of _Henry the Sixth_ is a reference to a paper-mill.

About 1745, the Campagnie des Indes began to import these papers directly. They were then also called "Indian" papers. August 21, 1784, we find an advertisement: "For sale--20 sheets of India paper, representing the cultivation of tea."

Such a paper, with this same theme, was brought to America one hundred and fifty years ago--a hand-painted Chinese wall-paper, which has been on a house in Dedham ever since, and is to-day in a very good state of preservation. Of this paper I give three reproductions from different walls of the room.

In _Le Mercure_, June, 1753, M. Prudomme advertised an assortment of China paper of different sizes; and again, in May, 1758, that he had received many very beautiful India papers, painted, in various sizes and grounds, suitable for many uses, and including every kind that could be desired. This was the same thing that was called "China" paper five years before.

The great development of the home manufacture of wall-papers, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, put an end to the importation from China. The English were probably the first importers of these highly decorative Chinese papers, and quickly imitated them by printing the papers. These "_papiers Anglais_" soon became known on the Continent, and the French were also at work as rivals in their manufacture and use. Of a book published in 1847, called _The Laws of Harmonious Colouring_, the author, one David R. Hay, was house painter and decorator to the Queen. I find that he was employed as a decorator and paper-hanger by Sir Walter Scott, and he says that Sir Walter directed everything personally. Mr. Hay speaks of a certain Indian paper, of crimson color, with a small gilded pattern upon it. "This paper Sir Walter did not quite approve of for a dining-room, but as he got it as a present, expressly for that purpose, and as he believed it to be rare, he would have it put up in that room rather than hurt the feelings of the donor. I observed to Sir Walter that there would be scarcely enough to cover the wall; he replied in that case I might paint the recess for the side-board in imitation of oak." Mr. Hay found afterwards that there was quite enough paper, but Sir Walter, when he saw the paper on the recess, heartily wished that the paper had fallen short, as he liked the recess much better unpapered. So in the night Mr. Hay took off the paper and painted the recess to look like paneled oak. This was in 1822.

Sir Walter, in a letter to a friend, speaks of "the most splendid Chinese paper, twelve feet high by four wide; enough to finish the drawing-room and two bed-rooms, the color being green, with rich Chinese figures." Scott's own poem, _The Lady of the Lake_, has been a favorite theme for wall-paper.

Professor W. E. D. Scott, the Curator of Ornithology at Princeton College, in his recent book, _The Story of a Bird Lover_, alludes, in a chapter about his childhood, to the papers on the walls of his grandfather's home: "As a boy, the halls interested me enormously; they have been papered with such wall-paper as I have never seen elsewhere. The entrance hall portrayed a vista of Paris, apparently arranged along the Seine, with ladies and gentlemen promenading the banks, and all the notable buildings, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, and many more distributed in the scene, the river running in front.

"But it was when I reached the second story that my childish imagination was exercised. Here the panorama was of a different kind; it represented scenes in India--the pursuit of deer and various kinds of smaller game, the hunting of the lion and the tiger by the the natives, perched on great elephants with magnificent trappings. These views are not duplicated in the wall-paper; the scene is continuous, passing from one end of the hall to the other, a panorama rich in color and incident. I had thus in my mind a picture of India, I knew what kind of trees grew there, I knew the clothes people wore and the arms they used while hunting. To-day the same paper hangs in the halls of the old house."

There are several papers of this sort, distinctly Chinese, still on walls in this country. A house near Portsmouth, which once belonged to Governor Wentworth, has one room of such paper, put on about 1750. In Boston, in a Beacon Street house, there is a room adorned with a paper made to order in China, with a pattern of birds and flowers, in which there is no repetition; and this is not an uncommon find. A brilliant example of this style may be seen in Salem, Mass.

Chinese papers, which were made for lining screens and covering boxes, were used in England and this country for wall-papers, and imitated both there and here. One expert tells me that the early English papers were often designed after India cottons, in large bold patterns.

The first use in France of wall-papers of French manufacture was in the sixth century. Vachon tells about Jehan Boudichon and his fifty rolls of paper for the King's bed-chamber in 1481, lettered and painted blue; but it is evident from the context that they were not fastened on the walls, but held as scrolls by figures of angels.

Colored papers were used for temporary decorations at this time, as at the entrance of Louis XIII. into Lyons, on July 17, 1507. There is nothing to show that the "_deux grans pans de papier paincts_," containing the history of the Passion, and of the destruction of Jerusalem from the effects of the cannon of St. Peter, were permanently applied to a wall. So with another painted paper, containing the genealogy of the Kings of France, among the effects of Jean Nagerel, archdeacon at Rouen in 1750. These pictured papers, hung up on the walls as a movable decoration, form one step in the development of applied wall-papers.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the commonest patterns for unpictorial wall decoration were taken from the damasks and cut-velvets of Sicily, Florence, Genoa, and other places in Italy. Some form of the pine-apple or artichoke pattern was the favorite, a design developed partly from Oriental sources and coming to perfection at the end of the fifteenth century, copied and reproduced in textiles, printed stuffs, and wall-papers, with but little change, down to the nineteenth century.

From the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XVII, I quote again: "Wall-papers did not come into common use in Europe until the eighteenth century, though they appear to have been used much earlier by the Chinese. A few rare examples exist in England, which may be as early as the eighteenth century; these are imitations, generally in flock, of the fine old Florentine and Genoese cut-velvets, and hence the style of the design in no way shows the date of the paper, the same traditional patterns being reproduced for many years, with little or no change. Machinery enabling paper to be made in long strips was not invented till the end of the eighteenth century, and up to that time wall-paper was painted on small squares of hand-made paper, difficult to hang, disfigured by joints, and consequently costly; on this account wall-papers were slow in superseding the older modes of mural decoration, such as wood panelling, painting, tapestry, stamped leather, and printed cloth. A little work by Jackson, of Battersea, printed in London in 1744, gives some light on papers used at that time. He gives reduced copies of his designs, mostly taken from Italian pictures or antique sculpture during his residence in Venice. Instead of flowering patterns covering the walls, his designs are all pictures--landscapes, architectural scenes, or statues--treated as panels, with plain paper or painting between. They are all printed in oil, with wooden blocks worked with a rolling press, apparently an invention of his own. They are all in the worst possible taste, and yet are offered as an improvement on the Chinese papers then in vogue."

In 1586 there was in Paris a corporation called _dominotiers_, domino makers, which had the exclusive right to manufacture colored papers; and they were evidently not a new body. "Domino" was an Italian word, used in Italy as early as the fifteenth century for marbled paper. French gentlemen, returning from Milan and Naples, brought back boxes or caskets lined with these papers, which were imitated in France and soon became an important article of trade. The foreign name was kept because of the prejudice in favor of foreign articles. But French taste introduced a change in the character of the ornament, preferring symmetrical designs to the hap-hazard effect of the marbling. They began then to print with blocks various arabesques, and to fill in the outlines with the brush.

In Furetiere's Dictionary, of the last quarter of the seventeenth century, _dominotier_ is defined, "workman who makes marbled paper and other papers of all colors and printed with various figures, which the people used to call 'dominos'."

On March 15, 1787, a decree of the French King's Council of State declared that the art of painting and printing paper to be used in furnishings was a dependence of the governing board of the "_Marchands-Papetiers-Dominotiere-Feuilletinere_."

This domino-work was for a long time principally used by country folk and the humbler citizens of Paris to cover parts of their rooms and shops; but near the end of the seventeenth century there was hardly a house in Paris, however magnificent, that did not have some place adorned with some of this domino-work, with flowers, fruits, animals and small human figures. These pictures were often arranged in compartments. The dominotiers made paper tapestries also, and had the right to represent portraits, mythological scenes and Old and New Testament stories. At first they introduced written explanations, but the letter printers thought this an infringement of their rights; therefore it was omitted.

We are told by Aumonier that little precise information is to be found concerning the domino papers. "Some were made from blocks of pear-tree wood, with the parts to be printed left in relief, like type. The designs were small pictures and in separate sheets, each subject complete to itself. They were executed in printing-ink by means of the ordinary printing-press. Some were afterwards finished by hand in distemper colors; others were printed in oil, gold-sized and dusted over with powdered colors, which gave them some resemblance to flock papers."

Much is said about flock paper, and many were the methods of preparing it. Here is one: "Flock paper, commonly called cloth paper, is made by printing the figures with an adhesive liquid, commonly linseed oil, boiled, or litharge. The surface is then covered with the flock, or woolen dust, which is produced in manufactories by the shearing of woolen cloths, and which is dyed of the requisite colors. After being agitated in contact with the paper, the flocks are shaken off, leaving a coating resembling cloth upon the adhesive surface of the figures." The manufacture of this paper was practised, both in England and France, early in the seventeenth century. I find in the Oxford Dictionary the following examples of the early mention of flock cloth, which was the thing that suggested to Le François his invention of flock paper:

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Old Time Wall PapersChapter I: Front Matter

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