The Story of Wallpaper Fabric of Britain

Wallpaper.

So ordinary, so trivial, it might seem barely worth talking about,

and yet, for hundreds of years, it's been part our lives.

In its time, wallpaper has been anything but ordinary.

It's been at the height of luxury.

It's aroused disgust.

It's caused moral outrage.

And, at one stage, it even threatened to poison us.

The history of wallpaper

is a much more eventful one than you might think.

Only a handful of British designers and makers of wallpaper

have become household names.

Most have been unknown.

But the patterns they created have had a deep effect on us.

Whether it's made by hand...

..or by machine,

wallpaper has broadcast our tastes and aspirations to the world.

For all these reasons, wallpaper is more than just a background.

It's part of the fabric of our lives.

Most of what we know about early wallpaper has had to be discovered

from pieces tucked away behind skirting boards,

lost under floorboards and hidden in attics.

The history of wallpaper has literally been pieced together

from fragments.

Now, there's been an intriguing find in a National Trust property

built in 1720, here on North Brink in Wisbech.

The building's currently not much to look at.

It's being restored, which is how an important lost piece

of wallpaper history has been revealed.

So what are we looking at here?

This is an amazingly rare survivor from the 1720s,

when the house was built.

Gosh, that little section? So the owner of this house, back in 1720,

when this was on the wall, would have been a wealthy merchant?

Just to own the house, he'd have to be pretty wealthy.

-So that was the height of fashion?

-It certainly was in this household.

Another little fragment has survived here.

It's survived only because it was covered by a dado rail here.

And skirting there.

And a skirting there.

So, is this quite rare?

Yeah. I got very excited when someone sent me a photograph

and I saw it come up on the screen.

I thought, "That looks pretty good."

I always refer to wallpaper that's been taken off the wall as dead wallpaper.

This is live. It might not look live

but this is live wallpaper here, just hanging on.

Andrew needs to remove this rare fragment from its vulnerable position,

so it can be preserved.

He's been able to pinpoint its early 18th century date

from the architectural context and the printing techniques.

I was impressed with that.

Well, 30 years' training, it doesn't get any better than that.

Beautiful.

Now, having it off the wall in my hands, I can see the weight of the paper.

It's quite a stout paper,

and it really gives an idea of the order of printing.

First the pinky-red would have been block printed,

and then the white on top of that.

And then the black outline from a wooden block again on top.

And then, finally, the areas of green would have been produced

with the aid of a stencil and a brush.

That's very good.

We've got some other pieces in the cupboard

which will then allow us to piece together the whole design,

even though we have a relatively small area in terms of paper.

And I've had a go.

This piece I'm holding in my hand is that little section there.

The floral design being the dominant feature,

-but then these two vase shapes.

-I can see.

I think that was probably repeated from ceiling to floor.

Isn't that nice? What a lovely pattern.

So, available in your local wallpaper shop perhaps in a few months' time.

A piece of wallpaper from the early 18th century is a precious find

but the story of wallpaper in Britain begins even earlier.

Back in the 16th century.

Simple black-and-white printed paper sheets were sold by stationers

for lining boxes, like we might line drawers today.

But at some point in the 1500s, people started taking them

and sticking them to their walls.

Anthony Wells-Cole has studied some surviving examples.

Here we have a single-sheet decorative paper of a kind

which was printed by stationers in black on white.

As you can see, the pattern is complete on the single paper sheet

but it's printed with a simple decorative border all the way round.

And this is how you generally find them pasted inside document boxes.

But you could actually, by trimming one side and either top or bottom,

then get the pattern to repeat both horizontally like that

and vertically like that.

The repeat works perfectly well.

So this is really the moment at which these decorative papers

first begin to be used for the decoration

of something bigger than document boxes -

hung on the walls of a house.

In the late 17th century, these multi-purpose printed sheets

grew in popularity, soon becoming specially made papers for walls,

known as "paper hangings".

Most were designed to imitate textiles - the silk damasks,

tapestries and embroideries hung on the walls of the rich -

and they were bought by merchants

keen to ape the decor of the aristocracy.

By the 18th century, wallpaper was being made

by specialist "paper stainers".

We don't know much about the people who practised this trade

but they have left us with a few clues.

Luckily enough, we do have a link to the wallpaper-makers from the past

through these - trade cards - small advertising cards for wallpaper.

They give us a pretty good idea of the designs that were available

and what inspired those designs.

I particularly like this one because there's so much going on.

This dates from 1715, a company based in London,

the Blue Paper Manufacturer - Abraham Price the proprietor.

Instantly it says,

"This is what's happening - this is the latest fashion."

They could imitate anything from Irish stitch, flower'd sprigs and branches,

others yard-wide in imitation of marble fit for the hangings

of parlours, dining rooms and staircases.

It's got little images of the wallpaper being block printed.

It's also got a suggestion of Irish stitch

hanging down one side of this window.

And you could have wallpaper mimicking and imitating

anything you wanted.

So there you are, look.

Wallpaper is always trying to look like something else.

But not all imitations were cheap.

In the early 18th century, wallpaper began to go upmarket.

The most prized wallpaper was flock, with a raised, furry design

which looked like cloth.

It was even considered suitable for the grandest of houses,

like Clandon Park, built in the 1720s.

These days, flock wallpaper tends to have a rather dubious reputation

but back in the early part of the 18th century,

it was considered the most elite of wallpaper.

Now, this room is a rare survival.

This rich red flock was hung around 1730, and survived because

it was later hidden away under green silk hangings.

Flock like this was designed to copy

one of the most expensive wall decorations of the day -

rich hangings of silk velvet.

And it is surprisingly effective.

And although flock is significantly cheaper than the silks it copied,

nevertheless, it was considered grand enough

for a baron to stick up on the walls.

In fact, 18th century British-made flock wallpaper

became the envy of the world.

It was even exported to France,

where it was so fashionable, people took down their priceless tapestries

to put up flock wallpaper instead.

This sudden elevation in status was made possible

by one vital British innovation.

A revolution in wallpaper printing - the roll.

Allyson McDermott is an expert on historic wallpaper,

who can show me how flock is made.

It starts with putting the background colour

on that all-important roll of paper.

So we're going to have a go at making 18th century wallpaper.

How was the paper originally joined together to make rolls?

Well, it was just single sheets,

and when they first started using wallpapers in the 17th century,

they just applied it on the wall in sheets.

But as the patterns got bigger and bigger

to imitate silks and damasks, they came up with the clever idea

of joining it, which they would do by...

-pasting up along there with animal glue...

-Just overlapping.

..overlapping it like that, and then pounding it.

And so, when it's joined, it looks something like that.

-And there you go, a roll of paper.

-Exactly.

-The width hasn't really changed that much, has it?

-It hasn't.

That's why it's very useful when you're trying to recreate a design

from little fragments you've found, because it was always 21 inches.

So you've prepared this with a ground already, haven't you?

There's one coat of distemper ground,

and this is a very complicated colour

-because you need to get a really, really rich red colour.

-OK.

So you have to lay four layers, starting with that,

then we're going to do a rich terracotta,

-then we'll do two layers of crimson over that.

-Wow.

And then a crimson varnish, so you get a real sheen.

-You really are building up a foundation before you can start to print.

-Exactly.

-Unusual looking brushes.

-Yes.

We had them copied from 18th century designs for brushes.

And they are super. They give a wonderful textural quality.

-Why are they round?

-Well, you'll find out.

OK, come on, then. Show me.

-One for you.

-Do you want me to work in circles like this?

-Yes.

You almost stroke it on. It's quite a sensual experience.

-OK?

-OK. Just keep grinding in?

-Yes, go for it. Very gently.

-Is the idea to lose the swirling lines?

-I don't think so, no,

because that's how it looked in the 18th century

so that's what we're trying to achieve -

an authentic facsimile copy, which has all those wonderful textural qualities.

-So it's historically correct.

-Exactly.

That's absolutely brilliant.

It's all about the amount of pressure you put on,

and if you can get it nice and even like that, that's really good.

-Is that OK?

-That's brilliant.

You can see the paper starting to undulate, can't you?

You can imagine how difficult it is to hang.

As soon as you wet the back and put paste on, it's all over the place,

-so it takes a real specialist to do it.

-I enjoyed that.

The wallpaper is printed using wooden blocks

with the pattern carved in relief.

The great advantage of those long rolls of paper

becomes clear at this stage.

Rather than having to fit the whole repeat pattern onto a single sheet,

patterns can be as long as you like, suitable for the grandest rooms.

In this case, Allyson's printer Den is using two different blocks.

Pop that one on there and the other goes on the line.

OK.

By carefully aligning them,

the pattern could repeat seamlessly along the roll.

We're using a special slow-drying paint -

a vital ingredient for flock wallpaper.

Not bad at all.

-Quite a frightening process to start with.

-It is. Absolutely terrifying.

You're now painting in the bits that are missing.

I'm retouching, yes.

Back in the 18th century, this is exactly what would have happened once the block was printed.

-Someone would be here touching it.

-Yes.

Are you going to be really fussy and do every single little hole?

-Yes.

-You do? Right, OK.

We do, yes, we do. We like it to be perfect.

-What's going to happen to it now?

-Now we lift it very carefully

and we'll take it into the flocking room.

That has to be in a separate area

because the flock can get everywhere.

We put it in a sealed box.

In the 18th and early 19th century, it did get everywhere.

-Do we have to let that dry first?

-No. It goes in exactly as it is.

-The stickier the better.

-Right, OK.

Right, we'll pop it straight in the box.

-What's next, Allyson?

-Ladle some of the flock on.

This is just... What is this? Chopped-up wool?

-It is chopped-up wool, exactly that.

-How do you chop that up so fine?

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find anybody to do this any more.

This particular batch was made by a completely mad friend of mine

who used a very sharp rotary lawn mower,

-which he operated with a bicycle.

-Really?

How was this traditionally done? That does sound bonkers.

They did have flock-cutting boxes with very sharp blades in

and they would chop away at it.

So what do I do? Sprinkle it on the top?

Yes, just spread it over.

In the 18th century, they would cut flock by hand

so it's very uneven and quite long.

It gives it a hairy effect, which is typical of the 18th century.

19th century flock tended to be ground in mills

so it's a much finer flock

and it's more like the effect of sand on the surface.

Right, OK, next stage.

-Lid down?

-Lid down.

-Did you make this up yourself?

-We did.

-Right, now bang the bottom.

-After you.

That should do it.

Right, can we open the box?

We can open the box.

I think that's fantastic. I think that's very good.

It's stuck well. It's stuck really well.

Are you happy with that?

I am. I think that's pretty good.

-Picks up the light, doesn't it?

-Which is what it was intended to do

because, of course, in the 18th century,

it was designed to imitate silk damasks.

You get that lovely shimmering effect.

You get the matt effect of the flock and the sheen of the background.

Yes, that's lovely. Well done.

What a fascinating process.

The skill involved in making flock wallpaper ensured that it remained

a desirable luxury.

But in the middle of the 18th century,

an exotic new introduction from China

raised wallpaper to even greater heights.

Chinese wallpaper was hand-painted in incredible detail,

making each sheet a work of art.

This example was presented to Thomas Coutts,

owner of Coutts Bank, in 1794.

Today it's being restored, so it's possible to get a closer look.

Chinese wallpaper was hand-painted with beautiful, exotic scenes.

Each sheet was different and incredible detailed.

This was an expensive luxury and it was hard to come by.

Now, for the first time,

we had a wallpaper that was treasured in its own right,

and not just an imitation of something else.

By the end of the 18th century,

pretty much every great country house in Britain

had a room full of Chinese wallpaper.

Wallpaper was no longer the poor relation.

The British manufacturers were quick to respond.

They produced their own printed Chinese designs

which took their place alongside

the ever-growing range of wallpapers produced.

Florals, geometric patterns,

gothic architecture, patterns imitating lace,

striped silk dress fabrics,

all designed to look like prints pasted to a wall.

You might have thought that all this choice

would have thrilled 18th century consumers,

but for a growing middle class keen to get things right,

it seems to have been a bit of a worry.

Amanda Vickery has been studying a book of letters sent by customers

to a London decorating firm called Trollope & Sons.

What comes out of the letter books for me is this search for,

kind of, safety and getting it right and not getting it wrong.

-So there was a lot of social anxiety back then?

-Definitely.

But this is a letter which, I think, er... You get some little

sense of that, the anxieties of the consumer, and trying to winkle out

of Trollope & Co what they think would be the right thing to do.

"Mrs Burt of West Malling is asking for advice

"about the paper that she has put up.

"Mrs Burt does not know if the one she has chosen is very fashionable

"and begs Mr Trollope will send her word whether it is usual

"to cut out the borders as formally or whether it is now the custom

"to leave the edge and, for satisfaction, whether it is tolerably new."

-Right, that's interesting.

-She wants his reassurance.

She wants to be told... I don't think she wants to be at the cutting edge of fashion.

She doesn't want to be streaking ahead of the pack,

-she just wants to be in the ball park.

-Safe. Comfortable.

Safe, but fashionable.

Sometimes, when people talk about the consumer revolution of the 18th century,

you get this idea of unbridled shopping and hedonism.

In fact, what I find is something much more constipated, really.

Something much more rule-bound

and full of, "What is the right thing to do?

-"Everybody says I should have good taste. What on earth...?"

-"..IS good taste?"

They are very preoccupied with that.

This is written in 1799 - August 1799.

The person writing this letter has seen some wallpaper

in the house of a friend,

so it gives you this idea of keeping up appearances.

"I saw the other day, at our friend Mr Pageau's,

"some very pretty papers your man was putting up."

So, already he's glimpsed them on a visit.

"I am in want of a paper for a very small room,

"which must be papered immediately.

"I care nothing about fashion if they are neat and clean."

That's typical of a man, isn't it?

Well, does he really care nothing about fashion?

-That's the question, because they've seen something...

-That he likes.

Yes. And also, neat and clean are themselves concepts

which are fashionable.

"Neat", in the late 18th century,

means a spare, pared-down elegance.

It means well put together, not showy,

not drawing attention to itself, but still chic.

Where else are you going to get colour from in dank, old Albion?

Well, this would be it.

And green - they love green.

Nobody would ever criticise you for green.

I have to say, in the Trollope letter books,

green is the colour that's requested more than anything else.

I think you can unpack a whole world of taste

from a letter like that.

So it's clear consumers worried about wallpaper being too gaudy,

too fashionable or not fashionable enough.

But what were they actually choosing?

This 19th century order book from Cowtan & Sons,

beginning in 1824, is the earliest to provide samples

of the wallpapers customers selected.

Gill Saunders has been examining it.

Page by page, you get details of the customer.

Here, for example, we have Mr William Smith of 13 Sussex Place,

Regent's Park,

and he is ordering a number of wallpapers

on May 20th, 1825.

Here is a rather attractive pink pattern,

which he chose for a bedroom.

And then a rather simpler pattern -

little stars on a buff-coloured ground,

which he ordered for a number of rooms just described here as attics.

It's interesting that you do have this information,

this indication, quite often,

that a paper is chosen for a particular space.

But sometimes, the book confounds our expectations.

The papers we expect for bedrooms - light colours, simple patterns -

are not necessarily those which are chosen by the people

who ordered from Cowtan & Co.

They will often choose something we would think quite unsuitable.

Something very boldly coloured, something with a large pattern.

Even if the vagaries of taste mean what they chose isn't always

what we might view as tasteful today,

one thing Cowtan's customers could be sure of

was that they were decorating their walls luxuriously.

Wallpaper was expensive. It was still made using wooden blocks,

hand-printed onto paper rolls

that had been glued together from individual sheets.

But paper technology was changing.

In the early 19th century, machines appeared

that could make paper in long, continuous rolls.

The old method of producing glued-together rolls of paper

had a tendency to stretch or break when wet with ink or paste.

And now, for the first time,

paper could be made in wallpaper-friendly lengths.

It was the first step towards mechanisation.

In 1839, a steam-powered wallpaper printing machine was patented.

Amazingly, very similar techniques are still used today,

without the steam.

Carl Ashby wants to show me his surface print machine.

These machines are credited with being invented around 1839

and they went through a very slow development process,

up until about 1850, 1860.

Due to certain technical advances, these machines suddenly blossomed

into these wonderful, full-on, 12-colour, 18-colour, 20-colour machines.

These particular machines date back to before 1920.

-That's incredible.

-They're no different to where they were in 1860, 1870.

Talk me briefly how the whole thing works.

This is the ink tray here. These are water-based inks.

It's picked up by this blanket here.

That can be a hard blanket, a soft blanket,

and it will determine how much ink gets picked up.

And then it will simply transfer it to the back of the print roller

that sits against the paper that's on the outside of the large drum.

It's almost like blot printing on a machine,

and that's essentially what happened.

They took a blot printing process and converted it to manufacturing.

In the most sophisticated machines,

up to 20 colours could be printed simultaneously,

each colour in its tray with its own blanket and roller,

printing wet ink on wet ink.

At any one time, there's about 150 metres of paper, which is the equivalent of about 15 rolls.

It takes it over the back of the machine, through the grinding process,

before taking it back up into real form.

How much can you print in a day here?

On one of these machines, these are essentially

one of the slower processes, really.

These machines produce around 250 rolls in an hour so about 2,500 metres.

And will these last another 100 years?

Have you seen the thickness of the steel?

-They will, won't they?

-We hope so, yeah.

With mechanisation, suddenly wallpaper was available to all but the very poor.

In 1834, just over a million rolls of wallpaper

had been printed by hand.

Ten years after mechanisation, Britain produced 5.5 million rolls.

And in 1874, 32 million rolls.

A hand-printed paper might be 25 shillings a roll.

Machine-made wallpaper cost as little as tuppence a roll.

It was the age of cheap wallpaper.

In Birmingham, there's a unique opportunity to see the paper

ordinary households chose.

These houses, build around a courtyard, are known as "back-to-backs".

From the middle of the 19th century, they were rented to craftsmen

and their families, living in cramped conditions.

As soon as wallpaper was cheaply available, it was used here,

and layer upon layer has survived, up to 28 layers deep.

I've come to meet the researcher who's been studying this wallpaper, Husnara Bibi.

Back in 2002, when they started to restore the back-to-backs,

the director of Birmingham Conservation Trust realised

that there were a lot of layers of paper and something quite special.

She decided to rescue as many pieces as she could.

She went round with a black bin bag and put in as much as she could.

Was there a lot of wallpaper discovered?

Initially, when it was catalogued, there were about 60 patterns that were recognised.

But after that, I think 142.

That's an awful lot of paper, considering there's only around a dozen houses here.

Yeah, 11 houses. The reason we think there were so many layers

was because the walls were in really bad condition.

If anybody took down some of the paper, the plaster would come off.

People just preferred to paper over.

Can we talk about some of the earliest wallpapers you found?

The earliest bit we found is roughly 1850s.

This is an example of that paper.

You can see it would have been much brighter than this

and, because the paper's so cheap and there's a lot of acidity,

it's browned over time.

I like this particular pattern. What can you tell me about this?

This was obviously a darker red in its day.

Yeah, it's faded a lot. It's from around 1870, that piece of paper.

It's in a layer of about 28 and that's the 23 layer.

Can you talk me through what you've got here? These smaller fragments.

These were all from the same house, the same room, the same wall.

-How many layers thick?

-This one was about 21 layers thick.

We've taken them apart by soaking them in water.

Oh, that's nice.

-That's bright.

-It's quite a bold print, there.

We have a lot of fragments, but you can tell they were really bold and bright patterns.

When you're standing in these rooms, there's not an awful lot of daylight that comes through

your one window here, is there?

I mean, another reason why they were probably papering so often

is because of the dirt in the houses and the dirt from industry

and from the coal fires and oil lamps.

The papers got so dirty so quickly, which is why they replaced it

with bold and bright patterns which would take longer to age.

For you, it's been like peeling back the layers of history, literally.

It has. It's been really exciting to see what these working-class people

would have actually used.

We don't see very often what the everyday people would have used as decoration.

And how they expressed their surroundings with different colours and different patterns

and how they wanted to be cheered up.

Definitely. A lot of cheering up needed, living in these houses.

Thanks to mechanisation, almost anyone could transform

their environment with bright, colourful wallpaper.

And in 1851, this newly revitalised industry

had a chance to declare itself to the world at the Great Exhibition -

a giant trade fair housed in the Crystal Palace.

But what was supposed to be a showcase

turned into a minor disaster.

Despite Britain leading the world in machine-printed wallpaper,

the exhibits failed to impress.

There were many marvellous wallpapers printed with

a number of colours using machine printing,

and they were marvellous technical achievements,

but many commentators and critics who visited the Great Exhibition

were appalled by the aesthetic quality of these papers,

which tended to emphasise illusionistic patterns,

pictorial patterns.

Trompe l'oeil, and so on.

Patterns which really were, as they felt, unsuited to flat surfaces.

Then something extraordinary happened.

A government department weighed in on the debate.

They were so worried about dodgy British design,

they commissioned the Inspector General for Art

to write an official report on wallpaper.

The conclusion was that manufacturers of machine-made papers

obsessed about technical details

when they ought to be improving public taste.

There was a growing feeling in the arts establishment

that British design had lost its way.

Something had to be done.

Now, this piece of paper is evidence

of one rather dramatic attempt to try and turn things round.

It was part of an exhibition set up in 1852,

titled False Principles of Design.

It was first shown at the Museum of Manufactures,

which later become known as the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The idea was to try and show the British public examples

of utterly indefensible design.

Bad taste, if you like.

The exhibition featured a great deal of wallpaper.

So what did they think was wrong with this example?

Well, pretty much everything.

For a start, it features objects inappropriate for a wall.

Who ever saw a railway station on a wall, after all?

The other exhibits showed similar flaws.

Even this special Crystal Palace wallpaper,

shown at the Great Exhibition itself.

Too much realism, perspective and shading.

Realistic floral motifs came in for criticism

and imitations of fabric or stone were seen as deceitful.

The leading inspiration behind the reformer's ideas was Augustus Pugin,

one of the architects of the Houses of Parliament.

Pugin was at the forefront of Victorian Gothic revival,

but he was horrified by what passed for Gothic wallpaper.

Realistic architectural features, arches and pinnacles

stacked one on top of the other.

Pugin thought this was absolutely dreadful.

It was a falsification, of course,

of the idea of a flat pattern for a flat surface,

and so, in his own designs, he reacts very much against that

kind of pictorial design using these flat geometric or heraldic motifs

and flat areas of colour.

Pugin's cutting-edge ideas

were brought right to the heart of government

when he set to work on the interiors

of the Palace of Westminster in 1844.

The dramatic Gothic decoration left nothing to chance.

Every detail according to his vision.

This book is a wonderful treasure

because it contains these small samples of almost all of the papers

that Pugin designed for the Palace of Westminster.

Here he is, true to his principles, using flat colours,

simple motifs, but also, occasionally, elaborate papers,

using gold and coloured flock.

Here we have one paper with red flock,

and another with red and green flock.

100 different wallpaper designs were created

to adorn formal spaces,

committee rooms and even private apartments.

Many of Pugin's original wallpapers

were lost in the years to follow.

But by the end of the 20th century

people were taking a great interest in recreating Pugin's interiors -

and a remarkable discovery was made.

The wallpaper firm Cole & Son had amassed a collection

of thousands of wood blocks from many different firms.

And among them, Pugin's original wallpaper blocks still survived.

So, today, it's possible to recreate many of Pugin's designs exactly,

using the original blocks.

I'm going to get to print a Pugin wallpaper myself

with the help of printer Den Condon.

-What do I do?

-If you put your hand in from here...

-Yeah.

-..like that.

Bring it round and link it up.

What's underneath here? That's felt, is it?

Yes, it's a felt blanket which gives a nice even bed for the paint.

-Just press down.

-Push down.

Not only are the blocks original, the printing table itself

replicates a 19th century set-up

with its counter-weight to help with the heavy lifting.

On that little dot there.

-Bring the one the other side.

-Yeah, I've done it.

There.

Bring the arm over.

-What does this do, then?

-It gives you a lot more pressure.

That's it.

-Take it straight up.

-Straight up?

-Straight up.

There we are.

-Oh, that's not bad, is it?

-Not bad at all. Very good.

I'm happy with that and that's a good example of Pugin's work.

-That design.

-Yes.

Simple, flat, two-dimensional pattern,

designed to look good on a flat piece of paper.

But look at that for a lovely, old block.

It's splitting in places, but that's, you know, given its age,

and the fact it's splitting with the grain.

-It's been screwed together in places to tighten it up.

-It's not doing bad.

It still looks fashionable today, what we've just done.

It looks as good today as it did when it was first done.

Pugin's wallpaper designs were considered too large and too bold

for most domestic settings, but his approach was eagerly taken up

by later generations of designers.

In fact, the aesthetic of flat pattern, prizing workmanship

and design over mechanical detail, was at the heart

of what would become known as the Arts and Crafts movement.

At the forefront of this design revolution was William Morris,

and it was his wallpaper that spread his influence

into many middle-class homes.

Which brings me to 18 Stafford Terrace -

home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne.

In 1871, he set out to decorate this place

with the latest fashions in artistic taste.

When it comes to wallpaper, only one man would do - William Morris.

There's an inventory that belongs to this house dating from 1877.

It records Messrs Morris & Co supplying wallpapers

to the entire house at a cost of £35 and five shillings.

Now, here, in the morning room, the papers they chose

were William Morris's most popular design - the Pomegranate pattern.

And it's not just on the walls - it's on the ceilings, too.

The fact that the original wallpaper is still here

is testament to the success of Morris's designs.

His dense, stylised patterns, based on nature,

have barely been out of production since they were first made

and the craft element has remained vital.

No machinery here. Morris's designs were block printed and expensive.

But the owner of this house had fickle tastes,

which meant, sometimes, even the William Morris had to go.

Up in the drawing room, the most important room in the house,

Linley Sambourne's eye was caught by a new trend.

Now, here's a good example of Edward Linley Sambourne's desire

to keep his walls looking impressive.

He did change things a bit

and he seemed to think this drawing room needed updating.

In 1884, he installed this gilded, embossed leather,

imported from Japan.

He wasn't a prolific spender - he only just bought enough.

And I mean just enough.

He had it carefully installed around all the pictures and mirrors.

I can show you.

If I do this...

Look at that. Underneath, some William Morris wallpaper.

The Larkspur design, pasted up in 1871.

The occasional whim of fashion aside,

Morris's designs won over the artistic middle classes.

But despite the desire of Morris and other wallpaper designers to

improve the aesthetic health of the nation,

many people were more worried about how wallpaper might affect

their physical health.

Manufacturers had been experimenting with new chemical dyes

and pigments, which could be rather frightening.

Something the paper conservator Susan Catcher

still has to worry about.

-I presume I can get a little closer now?

-I presume you can.

Let me just take this off.

Was something quite dangerous going on there?

The green on this wallpaper contains arsenic

and so, consequently, it's a known carcinogen,

and because this has had to be humidified

for me to be able to consolidate it, of course, we've had the vapour.

There was a certain amount of public outrage

in the 1850s and '60s.

People assumed they were going to die

if they put this wallpaper on the wall.

I don't think you'd drop dead. Not immediately.

It took a little longer than that.

There has to be other conditions involved,

dampness being one.

And then the damp allowed a mould to feed off the wallpaper paste

that was actually holding the wallpaper up.

-That, in conjunction...

-Caused the gases to escape.

..caused the gases to vaporise, yeah.

By the time we got to about 1870, the British Medical Journal was

already highlighting the fact that there were problems

to do with arsenic coming out of wallpaper and killing children.

-Because it was in their nurseries.

-Green was a very popular colour.

It was bright, it didn't define gender

and the colour was beautiful.

-Beautiful emerald green.

-Vibrant.

-Very vibrant.

-Very strong.

-Still is today.

Yes, and that was the beauty of the pigment.

It was very, very stable. Arsenic green is a very stable pigment

-until it starts getting mould and damp.

-Yes!

And then it doesn't become so stable!

-You have the famous story about Napoleon Bonaparte.

-Exactly.

He died of stomach cancer.

-But...

-It was assumed it was the green wallpaper.

-It was very damp.

-Yes, it was.

I'm sure that they found mould as well. Maybe that was made worse.

But even today, as you can see, we're having to treat it.

What happens to this? That's being sealed once again?

It's not being sealed. It's because the pigment is very, very flaky

and rather than losing it, because that's what will happen...

-This is fixing it down.

-This is fixing it down, yes.

The droplets are just going under the flakes a little bit

and just holding it down.

I don't want to lose what we've... We've already lost quite a lot.

So did the manufacturers start to advertise arsenic-free wallpaper?

William Morris did. Yes, he did.

I think he was jumping a bit on the bandwagon as well.

But we have tested his arsenic-free wallpapers and I have to say,

they are, but I don't know whether all his competitors' wallpapers

can be said to be arsenic-free.

Even when it was arsenic-free,

wallpaper was losing its cosy reputation.

Once seen as the only way to a clean and fresh house,

wallpaper was becoming suspect.

A magnet for dirt, insects, mould,

even infection.

What people wanted was washable wallpaper,

and, in the 1870s, the introduction of oil-based printing inks

made this a reality.

Christine Woods has made a special study

of these so-called sanitary wallpapers.

Well, this is one of five wallpaper pattern books that were discovered

in the attic of a house in Leeds.

This book dates from 1895 and yet it's rare

and, as you can see, falling to pieces.

And on the top we have a sanitary wallpaper.

And the interesting thing about them is that

the design is not made up of solid colour.

The rollers are different to the rollers

used on a normal machine-printing machine.

And they have an etched design.

The design is made up of tiny, tiny etched holes

so the colour goes into the holes - sucked into the holes -

and then it's transferred on to the paper.

But however much you put your holes close together,

you're never going to have a completely solid colour,

it's going to be made up of tiny, tiny dots.

I think a lot of authorities on design felt they were rather dull,

rather dreary.

But, quite often, manufacturers who criticised them

were actually producing them, and producing them in their hundreds

because, of course, they were bread and butter -

they were keeping the industry going.

And I think they are wonderful. Some of the drawing is just beautiful.

I think we have to just bring them to the fore a bit.

I think they've been neglected.

But some problems couldn't be cleaned away.

Late 19th century writers worried that wallpaper

might also send you mad.

With the range of patterns available,

like this Victorian imitation marble, it's perhaps not surprising.

Mrs Beeton even specified that that in bedrooms,

certain patterns should be avoided.

Ones that might allow an invalid to imagine monsters and demons.

Despite all this, wallpaper was everywhere.

As the 20th century dawned, this produced a reaction.

The Oxford English Dictionary could soon include

another meaning for wallpaper.

A distasteful background,

from repetitive music to pointless images.

And for the first time, wallpaper's dominance was threatened

by paint.

A new generation of architects didn't like patterned walls.

In fact, they despised them.

What they wanted was the purity of plain, white painted walls.

The modernist architect Le Corbusier denounced patterned walls

as encouraging "accretions of dead things from the past"

that were "intolerable" and "staining".

So, in the 1930s, the design elite reached not for expensive wallpaper

but for the paintbrush.

To make matters even worse,

the Second World War put a stop to wallpaper manufacture entirely.

People were even encouraged to donate their wallpaper

to the war effort.

'Every scrap of paper that you put out for salvage

'helps to hang the paper-hanger.

'When it's been made into shell cases, gear wheels,

'aeroplane parts, cartridge wads and other articles of war.'

'So don't just bring out the paper you see lying about,

'ransack your house.

'Paper can help to hang the paper-hanger.'

But after the war, wallpaper came back with a vengeance.

It was partly thanks to the introduction of screen printing,

forcing ink through a stencil on fine-woven mesh.

New techniques had a big effect on wallpaper in the 1950s.

Screen printing set-ups like this one meant that wallpaper could be

printed in huge repeats.

And because making a screen is considerably cheaper than carving a set of rollers,

you could have short print runs with striking avant garde designs.

Wallpaper became fashionable again, shaking off the disapproval

of the modernists.

One of the most innovative ranges in the period was called Palladio,

a hugely influential set of screen printed designs aimed at architects

and interior designers.

Many of the Palladio papers

were designed by people

who were new to wallpaper design.

They were often artists or illustrators or designers in some other field.

This was one of the key ways in which the trade revitalised

their business, by introducing new ideas and new blood.

This pattern, I think, is very distinctively 1950s.

It's called Malaga, and this is the time when people are starting to go,

certainly the middle classes, are starting to go places like Spain

for their holidays.

They are reading Elizabeth David's cookery books.

Here's another paper inspired by holidays.

This one is called Bistro.

As we've seen, so many wallpapers took their inspiration

from textiles, but in the 1950s, that idea is being reinvented.

You're getting an abstract pattern based on a woven textile.

This particular pattern is actually called Weft.

This is Colonnade.

Again, it's been so much reproduced in books,

it's hard to know whether it was actually popular at the time

or whether everyone just loves it ever since.

Designs by the likes of Lucienne Day and John Minton

set the tone for an art-led transformation of wallpaper.

By the end of the 1950s, consumers were more and more drawn

to modern design, and the wallpaper trade was booming.

There's one place where you can really get

a sense of the wallpapers ordinary buyers were choosing.

This hardware shop in East London

has been selling wallpaper since the Edwardian era.

After the paper shortages of World War II,

the owners started to hoard wallpaper, and it became a habit.

Today, it's an Aladdin's cave of old wallpaper from the post-war years.

Forward-looking design in wallpaper continued right into the 1960s,

influenced by youth culture and psychedelia.

Here is a very good example of the patterns you'd find

in the 1960s. Look at that.

Bright, happy colours. That really is the swinging sixties.

New techniques in printing allowed almost photographic imitations

of stone and wood.

Some good examples are something like this. Look at that.

Here's a roll of cork.

Instead of putting cork tiles on the wall,

you could have a roll of paper imitating cork tiles.

Manufacturers also came up with the ultimate washable papers,

vinyl, and also we've got metallic foil-backed papers.

Look at that. Good quality.

That would look good on the wall today. That's an expensive paper.

A self-adhesive one as well.

But in the 1970s, with the wallpaper industry at its very height,

living spaces were dominated with bold geometric patterns

like this one.

I can remember my parents' dining room with patterns like that.

Sitting round the G-Plan furniture.

Very happy days.

This, this is exactly what we had in our bathroom! Look at that!

We even had a matching bath suite as well.

It was called "Sun King Yellow."

It was disgusting, but I absolutely loved that wallpaper

in our loo and our bathroom. That was my mum and dad being bold.

Not that this was to everyone's taste.

A long way from the mass-produced brightness,

the British tradition of handmade wallpapers had lingered on.

Before the war, artist Edward Bawden had been its leading champion.

Now there was a revival of interest in craft.

William Morris made a comeback

and designer-makers created new work.

Marthe Armitage has been hand-printing her wallpaper designs

from lino cuts since the 1960s.

It's magical seeing the whole process come alive

in a matter of seconds.

This is the fascination about printing.

The colour goes down all at once.

If you're painting, of course, it's bit by bit,

but with printing, there's something magical about it.

Yeah. Seeing that process evolve, just instantly like that.

How many rolls of paper could you print a day?

A roll is ten metres and we can't really print more than six

-in a day.

-Six rolls.

It's still a lot of work.

-Do you always use lino?

-Always use lino, yes.

The only other thing you could do for block printing is wood blocks.

-But you find it easier to cut in lino.

-Exactly.

You're surrounded by all your work here,

and I can see you go for soft, muted tones.

I don't like bright colours.

I do think wallpaper is a background, should be a background.

When did the interest in wallpaper start with you?

We needed some wallpaper in our house,

it was scruffy.

We couldn't afford wallpaper and so I suddenly thought,

I'd done a bit of lino cutting at school.

I thought if you made a nice, big block,

you could print your own paper.

-Would you like to see the first one I did?

-Oh, yes, please.

And that's the very first example?

So how did you go about doing that?

I didn't think very hard about the size of the block.

I had done a drawing and then I put it onto the lino.

Then I printed it on the floor, put the paper on the floor,

and then that block on top,

and stood on the block to get the pressure

and it developed from there.

I mean, you've inspired me to have a go.

I'd like to have a go at turning the handle.

-OK.

-There might be a few imperfections coming up.

You ink up and I'll do this bit.

-Just gently?

-Gently and don't park anywhere.

-OK, just go right to the end?

-Yes.

I like that word, "park."

Oh...

How did we do?

That's not too bad, is it?

That's quite good. Very good.

Do you regard that as a work of art, because I do?

I don't know... What is art?

-That's art for a start.

-I suppose it is.

Meanwhile, the world of commercial wallpaper started

to lose its way in the last years of the 20th century.

In the 1990s, plain walls would finally conquer the ordinary home.

Advertisers made very clear the prevailing view of flowery wallpaper

as those feisty '90s ladies were encouraged

to "chuck out their chintz."

But then wallpaper started sneaking back,

with special statement designs for single walls.

Feature wallpaper.

Today, in the 21st century, things are once again

going wallpaper's way.

Well, it seems wallpaper has made a bit of a comeback.

It's been on the rise for the last ten years,

starting with one feature wall in the room

and then spreading to the rest of the walls.

And technology is changing too.

There's a sort of revolution going on.

A minor revolution, maybe. It's too soon to say.

Similar to that which happened in the 19th century

with the introduction of mechanisation.

What we have now is the introduction of digital.

Digital printing means new designers

can produce their wallpaper instantly.

No rollers, no blocks, no screens required,

giving a new freedom to experiment.

It allows designers like Paul Simmons

to create surprising new wallpapers.

What was the inspiration behind this?

One of the things that we're known for

is our reinterpretation of the old Toile de Jouy.

They're late 18th-century textiles

with these digest interpretations of different cities,

this one being London, obviously.

We're really telling a story about the city as it is right now.

We've got the Shard and we've got the Gherkin here.

We've got some of the rioting that happened last summer.

Is this a popular one?

You know, it actually is, apart from in children's bedrooms.

It's a kind of X-rated paper. X-rated toile.

What about tastes?

What's particularly the most popular here?

What do people focus on? They gravitate towards something, I would imagine.

Actually, this one's been really popular.

This sort of design, it's got a classic feel.

There's a lot of work that's gone into it,

and I think there's something rewarding about looking at things

that do have a lot of time that's been spent on it.

There's layers of different repeats in the design

that builds it up and makes it have that really rich feel.

How much would that retail at?

This would retail at £300 a roll.

For your average wall, you'd probably need about three rolls.

Actually, when you think about it, if you buy a painting,

you're not going to get much change out of...

I don't know. How much are paintings these days?

I can see that going in most people's houses.

This, on the other hand...

This is sort of country pile meets bedsit.

-You have this...

-That's quite organic, though.

It's quite organic but it's based on stains and, you know...

-Something kind of...

-The stains of a bedsit.

The stains of a bedsit but trying to make it really rich as well.

What does the future hold?

In terms of technology, the quality of digital now

is really changing things.

But I think it's going to be a combination of digital and handprint.

There's loads of things that digital still can't do.

You can't print varnishes, you can't print metallics.

There's a quality of the feeling, the actual ink on the paper as well with handprint.

I think the future's going to be mixing those things together,

high and low tech,

and I think that's where the most interesting things are going to be happening.

-So the future's bright.

-Yeah.

-Literally.

There's a lot of exciting new wallpaper out there,

drawing on every possible printing technique.

And from independent boutiques to DIY superstores, the choice is huge.

Well, it's clear that wallpaper is enjoying a revival.

I know we've been here before.

Wallpaper has had its ups and downs, but this time it feels different.

There's a confidence about our choice today.

We're not so hung up about the dos and the don'ts

and the rigid rules of style.

It doesn't matter - we can mix and match.

Historical designs from the past with new innovations,

handmade with digital.

For me, wallpaper is here to stay for a lot longer.

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