In case these gray winter skies are getting you down, here is a perky wallpaper to brighten the mood. Aptly titled “Life Savers,” this wallcovering enlivened the interiors market sometime in the early 1970s. The design consists of circles, or life savers if you will, tightly aligned in polka dot fashion. The front of each...
Sandy Chilewich has popularized and boosted the reputation of extruded yarn manufacture, specifically in vinyl, which used to be reserved for more industrial applications. She took advantage of a fairly simple mechanical process involving relatively few steps to make much of the woven vinyl products that are part of her eponymous line. The extrusion process...
Today’s Object of the Day celebrates the winners of Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Awards. Honoring lasting achievement in American design, the Awards take place annually during National Design Week, with festivities for all ages celebrating design creativity and innovation. Pause is a strong graphic pattern using typographic characters that notify the reader to stop and...
Sandy Chilewich has popularized and boosted the reputation of extruded yarn manufacture, specifically in vinyl, which used to be reserved for more industrial applications. She took advantage of a fairly simple mechanical process involving relatively few steps to make much of the woven vinyl products that are part of her eponymous line. The extrusion process...
“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...
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...
It is easy to see why Nitty Gritty would be such a hit with the “younger generation.” It’s fun, it’s different, something not seen before in wallpaper designs. Nitty Gritty is formatted in a graffiti-style, with all the words and slogans written as they might appear in phone booths or lockers. Sayings like Sock it...
This sample book for the Paisley Collection is characteristic of the historic revivalism that was popular in the late 1960s. As the title suggests, all the designs are variations on the paisley motif. While many of the patterns show traditional styling, the designs have all been reinterpreted with a 1960s edge. The colors are vibrant,...
Trophées de Chasse is screen-printed on vinyl and features a repeating, overlapping pattern of mounted deer antlers printed over a dark background of tribal-inspired stripes. And it was available with a matching frieze to top off the wall. When I first saw this wallpaper, I had to laugh. Not because it’s silly (maybe it is?)...
