This beautiful monochromatic wallpaper is an excellent example of mid-nineteenth century stylistic eclecticism. The window, surrounded by fan vaults and Gothic tracery, is a typical Gothic Revival image. However, the bunches of flowers and swirling acanthus leaves that frame the Gothic interior are Rococo Revival motifs, pointing to the enormous  influence of French culture on...

This wallpaper by Peter Phillips was one of several designed by contemporary artists for the Marburg wallpaper company in the 1970s. Founded in 1845 in Marburg, Germany, the company is one of the oldest wallpaper producers in the country. Beginning in the 1920s, it became known for collaborating with contemporary artists to create papers, though...

The Cooper Hewitt has over 50 wallpapers by the little-known German company Hosel Tapeten. Centered in the town of Hosel, situated partway between Düsseldorf and Essen in the northwest of the country, the company’s output was very typical of post-World War II German papers. The period saw an increase in the amount of cheap, mass-produced...

In 1957, the Scottish fashion designer John Stephen opened a boutique for young men in London on Beak Street. One year later he moved the store, called His Clothes, to 5 Carnaby Street, an inauspicious street in Soho largely filled with rundown warehouses. The retailer soon became noted for his tight-fitting, flamboyantly-colored clothing and drew...

Japanese vases, Niagara Falls, and the Brooklyn Bridge are unusual companions in this American paper from the mid-1880s. The paper melds the long-popular fashion in the US for papers depicting landscapes with the then-current obsession for “Japonesque” patterning. This obsession had its origins in the importation of Anglo-Japanese papers from England in the 1870s. These...

From our archives, an Object of the Day on the Japonism-inspired wallpaper that was once installed in the Rockefeller mansion formerly at 4 West 54th Street in New York City.

Bonad or bonader is a type of folk art once produced in large amounts in southern Sweden in the regions of Dalarna and Småland. At first bonad were paintings on textiles meant to imitate tapestries and the wall hangings of the elite, but in the late 18th century they were produced increasingly as paintings on...

This wallpaper caught my eye at first because of the graceful swooping lines of the birds and the watercolor-like application of the blues. I thought it was a lovely scene of swallows flying in a morning sky. Then I noticed that many of clouds are actually water lilies. Are we looking then at the surface...

This paper features a delightful cast of characters. Various street salesmen, framed as if on postcards or playing cards, sell goods as varied as lavender, sassafras, and cod liver oil. In between them Neo-Rococo frames surround names of further goods such as “Tobacco”, “Sugar”, and “Tonic.” Though this paper is from the 1950s, one could...