I have always been a huge fan of wallpaper. I remember growing up, spending summers with my grandparents in Tennessee, staring at their dining room wall that featured a wallpaper mural of a stately Southern plantation. I could stare at that wall for hours. To me, that wallpaper epitomized elegance, civility and gracious living.
Much as I love that memory, today’s new options in wall coverings are anything but my Grandma’s wallpaper.
Wallpaper has existed for centuries; in fact, the earliest recorded guild of wallpaper hangers was established in France around 1599. Wallpaper has always been used as a decorative adornment for walls, but new technologies and techniques are expanding the possibilities, pushing designers and manufacturers to conceive of wallpaper in new ways. Recently, there has been a huge revival in the use of wallpaper as a design element in commercial and residential interiors. Once regarded as dowdy and old-fashioned, today’s papers are exciting and innovative. Contemporary companies are challenging the existing notions of what wallpaper “is.”
New graphic and photography techniques have made photo murals popular again. Gone are the crashing surf images, moon-landscape-with-the-Earth-in-the-distance shots and towering redwood forest scenes popular in the mid '70s. The new images are clear, crisp and clean. I have used an extreme photo close-up of a fruit still life to cover an entire wall in a kitchen. Bright, organic and pleasant, the extra large scale of the image made the composition more like a contemporary painting than a shot of a bowl of grapes, apples and kiwis.
My Dad frequently laments that nothing is ever really new. That old adage is definitely applicable to one genre of wallpaper enjoying a rebirth at the moment. Flocked wallpaper (see below) is back, but hipper and more in vogue than ever before. Current flocks still employ a velvet-like texture applied to a ground paper, but the patterns featured today are (again) modern takes on old designs. Huge damask patterns, as well as op- and pop-art iconography are very of the moment. I have a personal fondness for flocked papers, in part because they not only add visual texture to a space, but also contribute a tactile quality to an interior. Any product that does two jobs is a blessing.
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On March 7th, 2011 @ 08:28:am,
I remember the original wallpaper of the house I grew up in, and it's not a fond memory! Good to know there are cool, contemporary options available.