In this beautiful sidewall, layers of white, dark brown, and tan lines swirl into compositions reminiscent of chopped-up calligraphy. No words seem to be spelled out, and stylistically the calligraphy hovers between Arabic and Gothic scripts. The layering of the “words” in the paper causes us to see them primarily as ornamental forms, leading us...

Many of the most iconic products of the 1920s—perfume bottles, vanities, and jewelry—are feminine objects like those seen in this sidewall, now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s.

This sidewall, now on view in The Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s, is an excellent example of historicist tendencies in Art Deco design.

Whatever would William Morris think? How would he feel seeing how this clever sidewall takes his beloved wallpaper design (the first he ever created) and stylizes it into a series of dots? Whether it brings to mind the Ben Day dots used in comic books or an LED display, the result seems to have been...

Walter Crane was one of the most successful of late Victorian designers, and this must be one of his most beautiful patterns for wallpaper. It is a multi-layered design featuring several fantastical motifs such as winged sphinxes, winged lions, peacocks, the biblical Tree of Knowledge with the serpent wrapped around it, and medieval standards topped...

Rasch and Company is a West German wallpaper manufacturer known for producing papers designed by celebrated fine artists and designers. In 1929 they created a line of papers designed by the Bauhaus called simply “Bauhaus wallpapers.” Incredibly successful, the line never fully went out of print. In 1950, Rasch developed its Kunstler Tapeten “artists’ wallpaper”...

This frieze by the New York-based Robert Graves Co. is an excellent example of the use of Native American motifs in American design at the turn of the century. Though this was an age that saw an unprecedented suppression of native culture, Native American art itself saw an unprecedented wave of appreciation and praise, particularly...

Few things have captured the American imagination as much as the Wild West. A fixture of American pop culture, the Western genre had its earliest milestones in the first years of the 20th century with the publication of Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian in 1902 and the debut of the film The Great Train Robbery...

“Where It’s At” is not only the title of this gloriously psychedelic wallpaper but also how someone in 1968 would have described the United De Soto wallpaper company in Chicago. A division of DeSoto Industrial Coverings, Inc., United De Soto stood out for its technical innovations, being the first American company to use fluorescent pigments...