A History Adorned with Wallpaper, Part II
As we learned from the first part of our story, wallpaper arrived in Europe in the 16th century, and it was on the Old Continent that the wallpaper industry was born and began to evolve. We have reached the end of the 18th century, when the art of creating wallpaper entered a new stage of development. Here is the continuation of this fascinating story…
At the beginning of the 19th century, wallpaper gradually became a global phenomenon. One factor was the new fashion, arriving from France, for wallpapers featuring vast panoramas that served as an affordable substitute for extremely expensive oil paintings. The new concept involved depicting grand scenes inspired by mythology, geography and history, hence the many scenes featuring exotic landscapes and historical events. This new type of wallpaper became a kind of “window to the world” and, in this form, travelled from Europe to the United States, where it immediately attracted considerable interest.
Great Britain, which had fallen behind in the wallpaper industry because of the Napoleonic Wars fought at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, also returned to the market after the hostilities ended. Thanks to steam-powered printing presses, it began the mass production of inexpensive wallpaper, which was now affordable even to the less affluent working class.
Further technical innovations appeared in the 19th century, continually increasing the variety and availability of wallpaper. The time came when wallpaper began to be produced by machine and in colour. Thus, in 1839, Briton Charles Harold Potter (no, not that one) constructed a machine that not only printed wallpaper in four colours, but was also astonishingly efficient for its time, producing the enormous number of 400 wallpaper rolls a day (well, perhaps a little bit that one). But that was not the end: in the 1850s, a machine printing in eight colours appeared, followed by one printing in 20 colours in 1874.
In 1879, Austrian Karl Keitsch introduced the world to a new printing technique – gravure printing, and eleven years later, in 1890, flexography, or relief printing, appeared in Great Britain. At the same time, the market saw the introduction of the first waterproof paper (1871), followed by waterproof printing inks (1884), making it possible to create the first washable wallpapers, which could tentatively enter spaces previously inaccessible to wallpaper: kitchens and bathrooms (although we are still talking about paper, which rules out direct contact with water sources). Meanwhile, in 1888, Ferdinand Sichel introduced the first ready-to-use wallpaper paste. It seemed that nothing could stop such dynamic industry growth, but it soon became clear that wallpaper manufacturers had fallen victim to their own success: driven by a tremendous increase in production, they had forgotten one very important factor…
Such intense growth in the wallpaper industry inevitably had negative consequences. It is true that the market was flooded with inexpensive, mass-produced wallpaper, but in this race an important element quickly began to disappear: quality. As production increased, the quality of the paper, printing and artwork all declined. Wallpaper became tacky and highly susceptible to all kinds of damage, effectively discouraging more potential customers from buying it. Traditional wall painting returned to favour. It may not have been as advanced in terms of pattern and design as wallpaper, but it offered a much higher-quality and considerably more durable interior finish. And so, in the 19th century, the wallpaper industry experienced the first crisis in its history.
Wallpaper manufacturers realised that, if they wanted to win back customers, they had to improve the quality of both the graphic designs and the finished product. However, rebuilding customer trust could not happen overnight, as the entire industry had simply deteriorated too far and needed revolutionary changes and a thorough reconstruction. There were many problems to solve. For example, quite apart from the decline in quality mentioned above, the production of wallpaper paints commonly involved the use of deadly arsenic, which had to be replaced. All these changes therefore required time.
The true revival of the wallpaper industry did not come until the 1920s, but judging by the results, it was worth the wait. The wallpaper industry gained new inventions, such as machines for screen printing and glue application. Not only did the quality of the materials used for printing wallpaper improve, but above all, so did the designs, which once again amazed with their quality, style and variety. Combined with mass production reaching hundreds of millions of rolls a year, wallpaper became the most popular interior-design element in the Western world. It is therefore no surprise that this decade was hailed as the “Golden Age of Wallpaper”.
And so we reach the end of the 1930s, when the development of the industry was effectively halted by the turmoil of war. Wallpaper had to wait another decade for production to resume and for further innovations to emerge. After the Second World War, synthetic resin began to be used in wallpaper production, marking the beginning of a new evolution. Wallpaper became even more durable and practical. And although it never regained the immense popularity it had enjoyed before the war, it returned to its rightful place, consolidating its position as one of the key elements of interior design.
For the next leap forward, the wallpaper industry had to wait for the arrival of the 21st century, when new concepts, materials and technologies made it possible to develop the variety and quality of wallpaper on an unprecedented scale, promising a new golden age...
End of part two.