Reproducing HISTORIC Wallpapers

Wallpaper remains the quintessential room decoration. If you’re looking for a historic or specific pattern, be encouraged.

- MARY ELLEN POLSON

I once rented a summer cottage decorated with quaint wallpapers printed in the 1920s or ’30s. The papers were in remarkably good condition, but the plaster underneath was water-damaged in spots, and bulging through the paper. I pondered the options, on behalf of the owners: should they lose the wallpaper to save the plaster, or let the plaster continue to crumble to keep the wallpaper?

Maybe the wrong question. As it turns out, a surprising number of wallpaper makers have the capacity to recreate period wall coverings using techniques as traditional as hand-pressed block printing, and as cutting-edge as digital printing generated by illustration software. Working from old photographs and fragments barely an inch wide, these specialists have produced astonishing results. While the cost of a custom reproduction isn’t cheap, it’s not as expensive as you might think.

Steve Larsen of Adelphi Paper Hangings imprints bright-green varnish on a roll of ‘Pineapples’, a wallpaper pattern discovered on a wood bandbox. The paper is festooned over sawhorses to dry.

re-creating LOST DESIGNS

Most of the clients for this sort of work are, understandably, museums, and historical institutions. Others are individuals who’ve lost period wall coverings in a fire or flood and have insurance to cover the cost of replacement. In a perfect world, the client brings in a section of the desired paper that’s not only in good condition, but also large enough to show the entire pattern repeat. A pattern repeat may be less than an inch, or up to the entire width of the wallpaper.

“If the original is in good shape and not attached to plaster, we can scan it, or maybe photograph or trace it,” says Steve Bauer, co-owner and lead designer for Bradbury & Bradbury Art Wallpapers.