Pattern, color, scale, and repetition are important aspects when considering a wallpaper design for one’s home. The large, dark-red, asymmetrical medallions, set within light pink vining foliage unintentionally form a design of diamond shapes across the paper. Smaller foliate medallions in lighter shades of pink recede, while the darker larger medallions seem to move forward....

Kate Greenaway was one of the most popular children’s illustrators of the late Victorian period, a rival of Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott. From 1879, when she published her first children’s book Under the Window to her death in 1901, she illustrated over 50 publications from nursery rhyme books to ABC’s to her own annual...

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...

One of the influences on design and technology in the nineteenth century was new information on health and hygiene. It was discovered early in the century that germs cause disease, and there were a number of cholera outbreaks beginning early in the nineteenth century which lasted through most of the century. Wallpaper had always been...

Dating c. 1900, this feminine French sidewall belongs to a class referred to as “bathroom” or “sanitary” wallpapers. This designation is based on a water-resistant varnish that coats the panel, making it safe to hang the paper near the tub, and possible to wash it with less risk of damage or bleeding colors. For the...

This design of tall ships surrounded by dolphins in a turbulent sea was first used as a cretonne design, or printed cotton fabric, produced by Steiner & Co. This was published in The Studio magazine in 1899. The design re-surfaced years later as this sanitary wallpaper. This is a classic pattern for a bathroom, a...