Imitation Moulding Wallpapers of the 1840s

Illustration: Turner & Sons. Imitation moulding wallpaper design, 1849.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw a rise in the popularity of imitation wallpapers. These were wallpaper designs that were created specifically to portray the illusion that they were either types of materials or a form of decoration, which they clearly were not. Therefore, many of these wallpapers created an effect of a pretence to marble and other stonework, as well as a number of expensive imported woods. Our modern day equivalent would probably be laminate flooring, which gives the impression from a distance of solid wood floors, but clearly on closer inspection is just a photograph of a wood effect pasted onto pressed wood dust.

As to the nineteenth century decorative effects themselves, moulding styles usually based on a classical theme, were particularly fashionable. It seems unlikely that these imitation moulding wallpapers would have actually fooled anyone into believing that they were originals, but perhaps that was never their real intention. It seems likely that they were intended to give an ambience, rather than to be dishonest. In the hands of professional decorators these imitation wallpaper themes could prove very effective. However, some customers when deciding to take on their own decorative schemes, either through lack of funds or a misguided appreciation of their own decorative skills, did use them sometimes in staggering degrees of excess. They could be found in some homes framing the frames of paintings and the individual panels of doors. They were also used to border every conceivable wall and ceiling surface, even producing geometric patterns on ceilings, which gave the altogether disconcerting effect of outlining everything with a bold pen or brush.

The two pieces illustrating this article were produced by the English company Turner & Sons in 1849. They are representations of standard Greek style stucco moulding that could have been found in any Georgian or early Victorian interior and are therefore part of the general Georgian theme rather than that of the later Victorian. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, many of these imitation wallpapers were frowned on as being deliberately illusional or at least misrepresentations of reality. However, this did not stop the concept of imitation decoration as the large and complex trade in paint effects became extremely fashionable. The effects of both stone and wood were endlessly copied in different types of paint effect, on walls, ceilings, doors, windows and furniture. That one of the most popular paint effect techniques was the illusional representation of marble, perhaps says much about the later Victorian era.

Illustration: Turner & Sons. Imitation moulding wallpaper design, 1849.

Styles were often different within wallpapers themselves, with paper designs that was to be seen at a closer level were usually much more complex than those that were to be seen from a greater distance such as ceiling or near ceiling height. These imitation wallpapers sometimes gave the design reform movement great difficulty as many were against any form of obvious dishonesty or illusional form. That these decorative designs did both left some critics in no doubt as to their dubious intentions and purpose. However, other critics saw these decorative wallpaper effects as merely giving an ambience without the intention of deceit, and were therefore perfectly acceptable for interior use. To go back to our own contemporary analogy of laminate flooring, does the laminate try to portray itself as a solid wood floor, or does it instead give an overall ambience that would be appreciative of a room with a solid wood floor, while still being obvious to everyone that it was a laminate.

One thing that is sure is the fact that imitation wallpaper and paint effects were around for a long time before the mid nineteenth century and are still very much with us in the twenty first.

Further reading links:
Fabrics and Wallpapers: Twentieth-Century Design
Wall Papers for Historic Buildings: A Guide to Selecting Reproduction Wallpapers
Wallpaper: A History of Style and Trends
Wallpaper, its history, design and use,
Fabrics and Wallpapers: Design Source Book
Wallpaper (Historic Houses Trust Collection)
Wallpaper and the Artist: From Durer to Warhol
French Scenic Wallpaper 1795-1865
Landscape Wallcoverings (Cooper Hewitt National Design)
Fabrics and Wallpapers for Historic Buildings
Pattern Design: Period Design Source Book
The Papered Wall: The History, Patterns and Techniques of Wallpaper, Second Edition
Wallpaper in Interior Decoration
Wallpaper: The Ultimate Guide
London Wallpapers: Their Manufacture and Use 1690-1840 (Revised Edition)
Victorian Wallpaper Designs (Internatinal Design Library)
Twentieth-Century Pattern Design
Wallpaper in America: From the Seventeenth Century to World War I
Wallpaper, Its History, Design and Use; With Frontispiece in Colour and Numerous Illustrations From Photographs

The Future Opportunities of Hand Production

Lacemaking in Lefkara, Cyprus from Etsy on Vimeo.

Today's article was to be on a different aspect of lace design. However, I was approached by Etsy regarding the above video and was intrigued by the subject matter. The video deals with the seemingly age-old problem of machine versus hand production. The video itself deals with the situation in Cyprus where traditional lace embroidery is inevitably being led towards extinction by the importation of cheap machine produced lace, mainly from China. Cyprus is by no means the only area of conflict between machine and hand production and China is not the only culprit in flooding the market with cheap products. However, this video does highlight the acute confrontation between machine and hand production, which is mainly one of a personal and cultural mind set.

The problem itself is over two centuries old and entails most, if not all of the traditional crafts. However, textiles seems to have suffered perhaps disproportionately, with most of the industry at one point being exclusively hand produced, including both woven and printed textiles, along with embroidery, carpet and lace production. 

The industrialisation of the textile industry started in Britain in the eighteenth century and has been enveloping every aspect of the industry ever since. Lace was one of the last crafts to be industrialised because of its human complexity, and even now mass produced lace work is obviously inferior to that of the hand crafted variety. Traditional lace workers across Europe produced work for domestic, and particularly fashion industries for generations. Each piece of lace was hoarded and protected so that samples often travelled down the generations through families. 

Part of the appeal of lacework was the fact that it was so labour intensive and therefore expensive. It was also valued as a piece of human creativity, an individual piece of work that had been produced by human hands and therefore connected both human lace worker and customer. Part of the problem with machine production is the fact that, by its definition, it deals in quantity rather than quality. The casualness of bulk production severs the human link with the mass produced piece as it is now a relationship of machine and human rather than human to human, with the result that the casualness becomes part of both the market and the way that individuals treat the products produced by machine. They seem valueless and because of their relative cheapness and availability they are easily and readily replaced. 

Unfortunately, this casual indifference has become part of the tragedy of a consumer culture that has nowhere left to dump its discarded casual buys. One thing that hand craft can teach us is about finite availability, rather than infinite availability. Rather than buying fifteen mock woollen tops over a year, which would then only last that year, we could buy one or two that had been hand knitted and would last perhaps a decade. Instead of buying cheap chipboard furniture every three years, we can buy good hand produced furniture that although expensive would only need to be bought once in a generation. A good hand produced rug should last an entire lifetime and then still be useful to another generation.

The argument is always that hand production costs too much for the average wage earner to buy. While this is true, it is also part of a mind set. While good hand crafted products are expensive, they should last much longer than those spewed out by the mass produced market. Therefore, saving for choice pieces of furniture and accessories, rather than filling a home with cheap but voluminous items, makes sense particularly as far as the environment is concerned. Because we are told that it is our duty to consume in a market economy, does not mean that we have no choices to make. Many in the world survive on an a much smaller range of creature comforts.

This is not to say that the hand craft industry can change the world and save the environment. Many of our every day products cannot be produced by hand and are such an integral part of our life that we are loathe to give them up. However, there is no reason why the hand craft market cannot be much larger than it is. A proportion of the consumer market could well be sourced from the traditional crafts, and although it may well mean that the fashion led market of in built obsolescence would have to be reduced in scale and size, it may well help us to take control of our seemingly runaway dumping of machine made goods.  

There are still many professional craft makers across the globe, and an increasing army of amateurs. If the unfocused enthusiasm of the maker and the market led indifference of the consumer can be guided towards each other, then a brisk trade in products made for longevity rather than fleeting fashion could be fostered. Instead of buying cheap machine produced lace to throw away, we can buy a piece of hand produced lace that can be passed down to another generation.

This has turned into more of a personal article than perhaps intended, and by its nature will be bound to be disagreed with, which is as it should be. I like to think however, that perhaps some may see as I do, that the Etsy video does not necessarily spell the end of hand production, but rather shows an opportunity to at least fundamentally rethink some of the aspects of our market economy, the fashion dominated world and the consumer market that cynically uses it. That hand craft can be seen as part of the solution to some of the more pressing environmental problems of a throwaway culture, lends support to the fact that traditional crafts, of whatever form, still have a purpose and a vital function to play in the twenty first century and beyond.

I would like to thank Etsy for approaching me with this video and giving me the opportunity, or excuse, to write this article.

Embroidered Altar Cloths of the 1860s

Illustration: Anastacia Marice Dolby. Embroidered altar cloth design for Saints and Martyrs, 1867.

In 1867, Anastasia Marice Dolby published Church Embroidery, Ancient and Modern. The book was produced as a practical and technical guide for the use of embroidery for ecclesiastical furnishings. Although certainly pitched at an amateur audience, she did have professional help and reference guides from a number of individuals including Daniel Rock the English antiquarian and ecclesiologist who had a specific interest in church history and a practical approach to church functions such as the Mass. She is known to have used his Hierurgia or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which he originally published in 1833.

Dolby also considered herself to be a professional, rather than an embroiderer of leisure, a section of society to which the book was largely aimed. She had been a court embroiderer and termed herself 'late embroideress to the Queen.' In this respect, she felt that she had the connections, professionalism and the skills base to produce a confident book concerned with the correct approach to ecclesiastical embroidery.

Illustration: Anastacia Marice Dolby. Embroidered altar cloth design, 1867.

The book itself while not giving detailed plans and pattern work as such, is largely a practical guide to church embroidery. It gives details concerning the different church furnishings that could be embroidered, including frontals, altar cloths, pulpit hangings, book covers and book marks, alms bags and chalice covers as well as a number of other textile based furnishings that could conceivably be embroidered. She also included a guide as to the type of stitching to use as well as the use of appropriate colours.

One of the sections deals with altar cloths and five examples of Dolby's illustrations for various altar cloths from Church Embroidery, Ancient and Modern are shown in this article. As far as the altar cloth was concerned, Dolby was relatively specific regarding the materials used and type of construction. She informed her readers that 'some of these cloths are now made, expressly, of fine linen damask with ecclesiastical patterns woven upon them. Others are of lawn or finest linen, and bordered by appropriate designs wrought in chain-stitch with white or coloured cotton.'

Illustration: Anastacia Marice Dolby. Embroidered altar cloth design, 1867.

As far as colour was concerned, she was even more specific, feeling that crimson and blue were considered the standard and most appropriate of colours for the embroidery of altar cloth linen in particular. She did grudgingly admit that green and lilac could occasionally be used, although she was dismissive of the colours in general. This was not through any particular ecclesiastical or spiritual reasoning. She found from personal experience that the contemporary shades produced in cotton were insufficiently attractive as well as having particular problems when being washed.

The design and pattern work was more or less universally in the medieval style, however vaguely. This is perhaps not entirely surprising for a book written in a period that was still very much considered to be within the Victorian Gothic Revival era. The previous Georgian era had been largely a classically inspired one and the ecclesiastical embroidery and indeed church interiors were organised to express that interest. However, as can be seen from the five examples, standard gothic ruled.

Illustration: Anastacia Marice Dolby. Embroidered altar cloth design for Lent, 1867.

There was a genuine need for such publications as Dolby's in the 1860s, a period which was still part of the large expansion of British and Irish church building that had begun in the 1830s. This had much to do with both the development and rapid growth of cities across Britain, with urban populations having no access to the official state church, as well as the increase in Catholic church building which had had to start from scratch in Britain when Catholics had been emancipated in 1829. Catholic church building was also expanded due to the influx of Irish Catholics into England, Wales and Scotland during much of the nineteenth century.

Nineteenth and indeed twentieth century ecclesiastical embroidery is an often neglected subject, particularly when applied to amateur embroidery. Many churches across Britain and Ireland irrespective of whether they are official state Protestant or Catholic have a wealth of embroidered samples from both centuries and any local church will probably have some embroidery work on display, usually in the form of an altar cloth. Although many nowadays tend to originate from the 1970s, these pieces are still connected to the great tradition of church embroidery that goes back centuries and was produced by countless generations of women, who although in the main amateurs, produced a skills base that was professional in all but name.

Illustration: Anastacia Marice Dolby. Embroidered altar cloth design for Lent, 1867.

Further reading links:
Ecclesiastical Embroidery (Batsford Embroidery Paperback)
Butterick Art & Ecclesiastical Embroidery c.1898 (Metropolitan Handy Series)
Needlecraft Practical Journal #85 c.1910 - Ecclesiastical Embroidery
Sewing Church Linens: Convent Hemming and Simple Embroidery
Ideas for Church Embroidery.
Embroidery in the Church
Embroidery for the Church (A Studio handbook)
Clothed in Majesty: European Ecclesiastical Textiles from the Detroit Institute of Arts
Catalogue of English ecclesiastical embroideries of XIII. to XVI. centuries
Ancient Russian Ecclesiastical Embroideries
Designing Ecclesiastical Stitched Textiles
Church Embroidery: v. 1
Stitches for God: The Story of Washington Cathedral Needlepoint
Book of Byzantine-Ukrainian Ecclesiastical Embroidery
Parament Patterns: Counted Cross-Stitch for Altar, Lectern, and Pulpit Hangings
Church needlework ;: A manual of practical instruction
The Rise & Fall of Art Needlework
Church Needlework

Modern Bedroom Designs Ideas

Today, I have added Modern Bedroom Design Images. This Beautiful Bedroom Feature Large windows with subtle curtains, King Size Bed. and The Bedroom walls are painted in white colors aslo they use original shelving units or chairs. Here some pictures of Modern Bedroom Designs Have Look !