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The Making of Wallpaper

Printing Matters: 
Wallpaper in the Context
of Printmaking

Written by Andrew Raftery

One of the most exciting aspects of spending a lifetime as a printmaker is that there are always new techniques to learn, along with their attendant criteria and histories.

Carving blocks in response to the technical requirements, design imperatives, and functions of wallpaper opens up novel ways of making and thinking about prints. Modestly sized units form patterns to decorate and transform large interior spaces; this is very different from single-sheet etchings, engravings, woodcuts, lithographs, and screenprints, which typically define the field of prints, but ultimately it is familiar territory. Wallpapers are prints in every sense of the term and a wallpaper production studio is a printshop.

1 → Linda C. Hults, The Print in the Western World: An Introductory History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996). This comprehensive history of prints does not mention wallpaper.

It might seem redundant to point out that a woodblock-printed wallpaper is indeed a print. The word print encompasses the history of printed art, including its techniques and research methods. Wallpaper is well placed in discourse surrounding decorative arts, commerce, and industry, but histories of printmaking rarely recognize woodblock-printed wallpapers for being some of the most ambitious and technically innovative color prints ever made.1

2 → Victor I. Carlson and John W. Ittmann, eds., Regency to Empire: French Printmaking 1715–1814 (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art; Minneapolis: Minneapolis Museum of Art, 1984); Margaret Morgan Grasselli, Colorful Impressions: The Printmaking Revolution in Eighteenth-Century France (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 2003). These standard surveys of French printmaking from the period covered in our show make no reference to relief printmaking or wallpaper.

3 → In France these prints are called imagerie or images d’Épinal, after the city where many of them were published. This tradition of popular woodcuts colored with stencils continued well into the nineteenth century.

4 →   Jacob Kainen, John Baptist Jackson: Eighteenth-Century Master of the Woodcut (Washington, DC: United States National Museum, 1962). Kainen describes the typographic ornaments of Jean Michel Papillon (1698–1776), criticized by John Baptist Jackson as being carved with such finesse that it could not be clearly printed on textured laid papers of his time. Papillon was also involved in the wallpaper trade and left a description of the production and installation process. His essay and illustrations on the topic are described in Robert M. Kelly, The Backstory of Wallpaper: Paper Hangings 1650–1750 (Lee, MA: Wallpaper Scholar.com, 2015).

Woodblock printing scarcely gains a mention in most histories of printmaking covering the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.2 This was a time of great innovation in print culture, with many new refinements in existing techniques, such as mixed etching/engraving and the perfection of mezzotint. In a period that saw the invention of soft ground, chalk manner, aquatint, and multiple-plate color in intaglio, followed by the development of lithography beginning in 1798, woodcut seems comparatively static. It was used for popular imagery, often crude, and printed in huge editions to be sold at fairs and by itinerant peddlers.3 More refined woodcuts had an auxiliary status, serving as typographic ornaments, cut in hardwoods on woodblocks of the same thickness as the lead type. Decorations such as headpieces and tailpieces could be fitted into the printer’s movable forms and printed along with text.4 This led to the one widely acknowledged innovation in the eighteenth-century woodcut—Thomas Bewick’s (1753–1828) development of wood engraving on end-sawn boxwood. Although the density of boxwood had long been recognized for its durability during the printing process, Bewick used engraving tools on the circular rings of the wood to make a matrix that could produce hundreds of thousands of very detailed prints without showing wear. This had tremendous consequences for printed images until the gradual introduction of photographic reproduction by the end of the 1800s.

Some wallpapers in the RISD Museum’s Huard Collection are part of this tradition of press-printed illustration. Two sheets from Atelier Boulard (34.869–.870) (Figs. 1 and 2) consist of detailed repeating patterns printed in oil-based ink from relatively small blocks on a typographic press. In scale and style, they are equally appropriate for end papers in a book or for lining a box or cabinet. Made circa 1810, they are late examples of dominoes, or small sheets made to be pasted onto surfaces to create patterns. An earlier example, attributed to the manufacturer Basset circa 1770 (34.872) (Fig. 3), is stenciled with semiopaque layers of blue, pink, and brown applied over the black printing. The effect must have been charming when installed in an interior, but manufacturers clearly wanted more elaborate and controllable ways to apply color.

5 → Naoko Takahatake, The Chiaroscuro Woodcut in Renaissance Italy (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2018), 256–70. Takahatake recruited Linda Stiber Morenus to do a superb reconstruction of the chiaroscuro woodcut technique. 

6 → Kainen, John Baptist Jackson, 46–49.

Multiple-block color printing was introduced in Europe in the early 1500s. These chiaroscuro woodcuts evoked the effects of wash drawings done on toned paper and finished with white highlights. The first block carried the tone, with the highlights carved away to reveal the white of the paper. Subsequent blocks provided shapes and contours that were printed in layers of transparent oil-based ink to form the image.5 Chiaroscuro woodcut’s niche as a specialized, experimental branch of printmaking had died out before being revived by Venetian art dealer and printmaker Anton Maria Zanetti I (1698–1767). His woodcuts after the Parmigianino drawings he collected used the sixteenth-century chiaroscuro technique to combine antiquarianism with the fresh prettiness of an eighteenth-century palette (50.142) (Fig. 4). A more muscular approach is evident in the work of Zanetti’s sometime rival, the British printmaker John Baptist Jackson (1701–1780). Jackson’s Marriage at Cana (47.396.6–.7) (Figs. 5 and 6), after Veronese, is part of his 1740 publication of woodblock prints of Venetian masterpieces. These prints challenged the scale possible on contemporary presses and explored the potential of oily brown inks to suggest a full color palette. They were printed with immense pressure—the embossment is abundantly evident on the prints (47.396.6) (Fig. 7). Despite all Jackson’s ambition and skill, there is something disagreeable about the deeply printed glossy layers of ink. Jackson turned to wallpaper later in his career, without success, and his insistence on oil-based inks meant his work could not compete with the fresh tones of the distemper paints being introduced for wallpaper printing in England and France.6
 

Fig. 4
Anton Maria Zanetti 1, Italian, 1680–1757
Francesco Mazzuoli, called II Parmigianino, Italian, 1503–1540
Woman with an Amphora, 1724
Chiaroscuro woodcut from three blocks in pink, dark pink, and blue
Plate: 20.2 x 10.3 cm (7 15/16 x 4 1/16 inches)
Museum purchase: gift of Henry D. Sharpe 50.142
Fig. 5
John Baptist Jackson, British, 1701–ca. 1780
Paolo Veronese, Italian, 1528–1588
The Marriage at Cana, 1740
Chiaroscuro woodcut on two sheets from five blocks in light tan, dark tan, light brown, brown, and dark brown
Plate: 57.6 x 42.1 cm (22 11/16 x 16 9/16 inches)
Museum Collection 47.396.6
Fig. 6
John Baptist Jackson, British, 1701–ca. 1780
Paolo Veronese, Italian, 1528–1588
The Marriage at Cana, 1740
Chiaroscuro woodcut on two sheets from five blocks in light tan, dark tan, light brown, brown, and dark brown
Plate: 58.1 x 42.1 cm (22 7/8 x 16 9/16 inches)
Museum Collection 47.396.7
Fig. 7
John Baptist Jackson, British, 1701–ca. 1780
Paolo Veronese, Italian, 1528–1588
The Marriage at Cana, 1740
Chiaroscuro woodcut on two sheets from five blocks in light tan, dark tan, light brown, brown, and dark brown
Plate: 58.1 x 42.1 cm (22 7/8 x 16 9/16 inches)
Museum Collection 47.396.7

7 → Bernard Jacque in The Papered Wall: The History, Patterns and Techniques of Wallpaper, ed. Lesley Hoskins, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), 178. Jacque explains the scale of French industrial wallpaper production, where hand printing remained viable well into the nineteenth century. He asserts that eight hundred wallpaper printing tables (presses) were still operating in Paris in 1866.

8 → In 1806, British papermaker Henry Fourdrinier patented a machine that made continuous lengths of paper. His invention allowed for the seamless wallpapers that became the industry standard. 

For blocks intended to accommodate wallpaper-printing techniques, carvings have to be much deeper than those made for other methods. Every design element, ornament, and detail must be relieved—to have the background carved away by at least an eighth of an inch, if not more. These blank areas are carved deeper than anything I have ever seen for a relief print. The blocks consist of a thick layer of hardwood, such as pear, laminated to a much thicker subsidiary wood. In open areas, the top layer is penetrated to expose the lower layer. Metal pins can be hammered in for printed dots and broad shapes defined by metal borders, meant to contain absorbent pieces of felt which would hold color and transfer it to the paper—all inventions never seen in other relief-printing methods. 

Each color in a wallpaper design required a separate carved block. A more modest design may have used only a few, while a complex pattern could have needed a few dozen. A large wallpapered room might require that each block in the design be printed hundreds of times. Historical records imply that such woodblocks yielded millions of impressions, another reason they were cut so deeply.7 

In Western oil-based printing and Asian water-based techniques, the woodblock is inked face up and paper is placed on the block, with pressure applied on top of the paper. Ink is rolled, daubed, or brushed onto the carved surface before the blocks are hand-printed or run through a platen or roller press. Wallpaper printing is radically different. The color itself is a gelatin-based paint called distemper, traditionally used for decorative work and theatrical scene painting. 

To print onto the prepared ground, the distemper paint is brushed on a felt pad that the block is pressed face down against, much like inking a rubber stamp. The block is then positioned, again face down, on the paper by means of small metal pins protruding a bit from the edges of the block. The pins correspond to marks made by the printer on the edges of the paper roll and ensure perfect alignment of multiple layers. Pressure to the back of the block comes from the top, applied by means of a counterweighted lever and the printer’s body weight. The block is lifted, the paper is moved, and a new layer of paint is applied as the process continues. 

French wallpaper manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon’s large printed panels, the Five Senses (Les Cinq Sens), circa 1780 (34.899–.901) (Figs. 8, 9, 10), are prime examples of the new possibilities for decorative figuration that came into play during the latter part of that century. Conceived at mural scale, they are printed on joined sheets coated with blue distemper. The same blocks were used to print the framework for each of the senses; only the figurative elements and titles used different blocks, and scale was achieved with relatively small blocks used to print sections of the design. These printed joins are cleverly concealed, only discoverable by carefully comparing the different scenes. Although early wallpapers were printed on separate sheets that could be pasted edge to edge to form the pattern, manufacturers and paper hangers soon recognized the convenience of installing papers that were stored, shipped, and sold in rolls. In the 1700s, relatively small sheets made from pulped linen rags were glued together to make larger lengths. By the early nineteenth century, continuous rolls of paper were embraced by wallpaper manufacturers.8 Before printing, the paper is brushed with a ground color of distemper, which is allowed to dry. The ground has an aesthetic function of establishing the color harmony for the design, but the gelatin and pigment mixture also sizes and strengthens the paper, making it receptive to subsequent printed layers.
The figures and low-relief ornaments in Réveillon’s prints have a substance not seen in chiaroscuro woodcuts. The first layer to be printed on the colored ground was a medium gray, which provided a landing pad for the other colors. A dark-blue cast shadow articulated the edges of the reliefs. The figures were then sculpted by the addition of lighter and darker middle tones and finished with white highlights and the darkest values in the shadows. Every shape, from the complete silhouette of the framework and figures to the smallest highlight, is considered for its decorative value. These designs were immensely versatile and could be varied to great effect. The version of Réveillon’s Five Senses at Winterthur is on a gray-green ground, resulting in a subdued and recessive quality, in contrast to the punchy blue of RISD’s impressions.

9 →   Grasselli, Colorful Impressions, 10 and 42–44.

10 →    Grasselli, Colorful Impressions, 126–27. Grasselli analyses the color separations in the impression in the Ivan Phillips Family Collection, comparable to the fine impression at RISD.

The development of full-color distemper woodblock printing in France took place in the context of innovations in multi-plate intaglio printing throughout the eighteenth century. Jacob Christof Le Blon (1667–1741) published his treatise Coloritto in 1725, introducing the principles of four-color printing from copper plates using blue, magenta, yellow, and black to approximate a full color range.9 Other artists exploited his concepts of color and techniques for registration. A prime example is Philibert Louis Debucourt’s (1755–1832) Les Bouquets, ou La Fête de la Grand-maman (The Bouquets, or Grandmother’s Day) from 1788 (2012.6.1) (Fig. 11).
Fig. 11
Philbert Louis Debucourt, French, 1755–1832
The Bouquets, or Grandmother's Day, (Les Bouquets, ou La Fête de la Grand-maman), 1788
Color etching and aquatint
Sheet: 36.5 x 28.9 cm (14 3/8 x 11 3/8 inches)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 2012.6.1
Debucourt was a painter who translated a gouache of his own design into a print made from multiple copper plates. He rendered the effects of his brushwork with very fine dotted intaglio textures and printed them in two shades each of blue, red, brown, pink, yellow, and black.10 In prints made as models for design, Le Blon’s innovations were applied in simplified form. Jean Baptiste Pillement’s (1728–1808) drawings for the Twelve Months (Allégories des Douze Mois de l’Année) (2008.88.1.3) (Fig. 12) were rendered in 1759 by Pierre Charles Canot (1710–1777) on two etched plates printed in warm and cool greens to evoke atmospheric space. Anne Allen (active 1790s in France), Pillement’s wife, interpreted her husband’s Fantasy Flowers (2003.108) (Fig. 13) on two plates, each inked with multiple colors and printed on blue paper.
Fig. 12
Pierre-Charles Canot, French, 1710–1777
Jean Baptiste Pillement, French, 1728–1808
March; From Allegories of the Twelve Months of the Year, Allégories des Douze Mois de l'Année, 1759
Etchings with engraving print on paper
40.5 x 27.3 cm (15 15/16 x 10 3/4 inches) (sheet)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 2008.88.1.3
Fig. 13
Anne Allen, English, active in France in the 1790s
Jean Baptiste Pillement, French, 1728–1808
Fantasy Flower Design; Cahiers No. 2, Nouvelles Suitte de Cahiers de fleurs idéales L'usage des déssinateurs et des Peintres, ca. 1796
Color etching inked à la poupée on pale blue paper
17.8 x 13.7 cm (7 x 5 3/8 inches) (plate)
Walter H. Kimball Fund 2003.108
Compared to woodblock prints, color printing in intaglio was limited in scale, slow to print, and registration remained tricky. It simply could not compete with full-color prints like Joseph-Laurent Malaine’s (1745–1809) floral designs for Réveillon, circa 1790 (34.953–.954) (Figs. 14 and 15). The sophisticated use of color in these designs is unprecedented in printmaking. Bold chromatic combinations are used to form the red flowers through juxtapositions of hot vermilions and cool-rose-madder pinks. Most subtle is the slight differentiation of the cornflowers from the blue of the ground, and the nuances created by the darker blue accents. Foliage is brought to life with yellow highlights and turquoise shadows. The flamed tulips seem to be stroked with a brush. This is painting with woodblocks.
Color and paint are at the forefront of the Huard wallpapers from start to finish. The designers worked with opaque gouache or distemper colors to anticipate the final effect. A circa 1830 design drawing for a border provides insight into the designer’s process (34.1173) (Fig. 16). Upwardly oriented stylized acanthus leaves with what appear to be dicentras emerging from each side are opposed with clumps of downward-facing posies. These were rendered on a separate piece of paper, which was pasted onto a larger sheet holding simplified berries and leaves along with a band of even more abstracted flowers alternated with S-curves—it would be a stretch to call them leaves—against a woven green grid. Graphite lines can be seen at the edges of the drawing. These elemental marks reduce the pattern to syncopated geometric elements. The color is likewise economical, as it anticipates the work of the block carver. Light-green gouache covers everything green in the design, modified by smaller dark-green shapes for articulation. The same is true for the cool pink and darker warm red. The designer exploited just four paint colors to make a remarkably intriguing pattern. Such paintings, showing just what was needed to make the repeating design (34.1174) (Fig. 17), were the models interpreted by the color separator for transfer to the blocks. This was not just about tracing shapes and setting up registration. The order of printing and effects of layering were determined at the transfer stage. Finally, the printing was done with paint as opposed to ink. As we saw with Debucourt, most color printmaking in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century involved a translation from one medium into another, sometimes at a significant remove. Wallpapers were designed at scale, in full color, and in a similar medium as that used for the final result.
Fig. 16
French
Design for Wallpaper Border, 1830
Gouache and graphite on paper
33.3 x 41.9 cm (13 1/8 x 16 1/2 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.1173
Fig. 17
French
Design for Wallpaper, 1830
Tempera and graphite on paper
28.6 x 22.5 cm (11 1/4 x 8 7/8 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.1174

11 → Odile Nouvel-Kammerer, ed., French Scenic Wallpapers: 1795–1865 (Paris: Flammarion, 1991). Nouvel-Kammerer notes that the critical response to scenic wallpapers could be extended to any pictorial designs. “We can say that we believe it unlikely that anyone will manage to reproduce more faithfully not only the draftsmanship but also the subtleties of painting by means which are, nevertheless, relatively crude if you compare them with the infinite resources of the brush.” Even though this quote is from 1856, it highlights the lingering threat of fine wallpapers to painters.

12 → A room with an installed version of this design is illustrated in Hoskins, The Papered Wall, 87, ill. 86.

It is no wonder that during this time, French painters were anxious about the impact of fully pictorial wallpapers on their markets.11 Scenic wallpapers offered an alternative to murals, and smaller wallpaper panels were a versatile solution for overdoors, fire screens, and other applications (34.983) (Fig. 18). These prints brought the graphic clarity of relief printing to the color world of painting. They even have a subtle quality of impasto in the buildup of layers. Although they could not attain the seamless blending possible in oil painting, distemper-printed panels, with their matte surfaces and tender, bright colors, often must have been preferable to glossy, dark, reflective oil paintings in decorative schemes.
Fig. 18
Dufour et Leroy, manufacturer
Paris, France; 1823–1836
Sleeping Love (L’Amour Endormi) Wallpaper, ca. 1825
Woodblock print on paper
78.7 x 98.7 cm (31 x 38 7/8 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.983
Just as figurative wallpapers reflected contemporaneous trends in decorative and easel painting, pattern wallpapers often maintained a strong relationship to drapery and furnishing textiles. Eventually, designs that could only be executed as wallpaper emerged. Designers created graphic schemes to articulate and enhance architecture, acknowledging the structural nature of walls while opening new spatial dimensions in a room. These papers were often manufactured with coordinating elements, of which only fragments remain. One such remnant is a wide border intended to go above a dado or chair rail (34.981) (Fig. 19). Manufactured circa 1795, the complete décor would have included lengths of the folded leaf/feather pattern to fill out the walls, a wide upper border for under the cornice, and narrow borders to go around doors and windows.12 The distemper-printed areas are relatively high key. A warm-gray ground is cleverly made to represent two planes by delicate contrasting grays on either side of the darker center sprig and the beaded panel that articulates the stripe. Two shades of cool mint green add rudimentary shading to the vases. Dramatic contrast is created by the black flocking on the acanthus leaves and ornamental forms. Completely light absorbent, the flocking pushes the other colors back. In this case, flocking is used entirely for graphic impact—as a printed effect.
Fig. 19 
French
Wallpaper Dado, ca. 1795
Woodblock print on paper
56.2 x 108 cm (22 1/8 x 42 1/2 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.981
These special effects multiplied as new techniques were introduced. This is especially the case with borders, which represent the ultimate in technical virtuosity on the part of designers, block cutters, and printers. Up to twenty blocks were used to create illusionistic images and ingenious textures (34.1082) (Fig. 20). Brushed distemper grounds were polished to a mellow sheen in a technique called satination, exploiting contrasts between matte and shiny surfaces. Blended grounds and blended printing from blocks could be used on the same border design, and flocking was used on its own or overprinted with multiple layers of distemper (34 .1167) (Fig. 21). Once again, there are no precedents or comparable examples of such extreme textural experimentation in non-wallpaper prints of the period. The results are entirely original and often bizarre. Dufour and Leroy’s circa 1825 double border (34.1046) (Fig. 22) features interlinked stems of celosia on top of gray medallions flanked by ochre columns modeled in brown. An actual celosia flower is characterized by its velvety texture, which might have been perfectly evoked in the wallpaper by flocking. Perversely, the flocking is not used for the flowers, but for the brown foliage and architectural band. The flowers are beautifully rendered in three shades of Prussian blue, despite the fact there has never been a blue celosia in nature. The jarring effect of the Prussian blue cockscombs and the brown foliage create a disconcerting, if fascinating, impression. As always, one wonders what it would be like to live in a room dominated by these extraordinary prints.
Fig. 20 
French
Wallpaper Border, ca. 1804–1811
Woodblock print on paper
34.1082
Fig. 21 
French
Flocked Wallpaper Border, 1830
Woodblock print on paper with flocking
25.4 x 41.6 cm (10 x 16 3/8 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.1167
Fig. 22 
Pair of Wallpaper Borders, ca. 1825
Woodblock print on paper with flocking
83.2 x 51.4 cm (32 3/4 x 20 1/4 in.)
Mary B. Jackson Fund 34.1046
It is essential to remember that every item the Huards collected represents some aspect of a complete interior installation that has been lost. Expansion of graphic language and technical innovations in wallpaper are only parts of what make this art form important to the history of printmaking. Wallpaper enabled prints to extend to room scale, to articulate architecture, and to penetrate daily life as a constant backdrop. Proliferating patterns created enveloping experiences of near-abstraction (34.974) (Fig. 23), nature (34.1100) (Fig. 24), witty commentary on the draper’s trade (34.1056) (Fig. 25), and even print culture itself (34.950) (Fig. 26).