Project Report - Aidan Liggins

Create your own scene baby!


Contemporary wallpapers were the mid range mass produced rolls in hardware stores; rows of white floral designs, with one or two bright accent colours and large, bold prints, sometimes with a metallic finish. Florals are often a central focus, and for me, are very overdone. I realised that the design and production of wall coverings are affected by budget, and B&Q wouldn’t be able to produce hand embroidered wall coverings for £5 a roll. However, I believe that there is room for an imaginative, interesting and affordable approach, that doesn’t use flowers as its main subject. Further up the market the ideas become more interesting. Playing with scale (Tracey Kendall), quality of line (Claire Caulfield), more inventive use of colours (Timorous Beasties), foils, flocking effect, hand sewn, or machine stitched (Alice Kettle). These are the contemporary, inventive wall coverings that are moving things forward.
My initial response to the brief was to research the three themes involved. I had never heard of Toile de jouy or Trompe l’oeil, and so briefly researched historical and contemporary examples. Toile de jouy was the one that appealed to me most, as I had never done anything like this, and it seemed like a challenge to create a new take on this tradition style wallpaper.

Metallic effects have been used on wall coverings since the 17th century, however not on paper, but onto leather. These wall coverings were intended to show the status of the owner; covered in gold to add glamour, status and value. Apart from using copious amounts of animal leather and foils, the process was long and strenuous. The craftsmen would carve out the design onto a wooden roller, coat the leather with tin foil and then place the leather over the top of the roller and bash the leather into the design with a hard brush. Several layers of varnish are then washed over it to make the design look gold, painted with oil paints, which makes certain aspects of the design look enamelled, finally going through an antiquing process. The leather would be so heavy by the end that it would be tacked up onto the wall; a very expensive process, only available to the richest people.

The Japanese made imitation leather, using compressed paper, the same used for tobacco pouches. This imitation leather is the one used today by Alexandra Rochman, who used this age old method to make leather wall coverings for the Whitworth gallery. Drawing Room, decorated with Rottmann, Strome and Co's Japanese Leather Paper. He reproduced two wallpapers seen in an illustration (See above image). Unfortunately he did not initially have a sample of the wallpaper, only this photograph. He researched the manufacturers of wallpaper at this time, finding some sample books, containing a sample of one of the two designs. He was able to reproduce one perfectly, but the other proved more difficult due to the limitations of the photograph, therefore he recreated the design to the best of his abilities.
The 1920’s brought aluminium powder into popular use to create metallic effects on wall coverings. By the 1950’s, they had been able to turn this into liquid, giving a lovely smooth finish, allowing it to be screen printed. The 1960’s were fascinated with futuristic and metallic materials, covering whole walls in metal sheets backed with paper, increasing the potential for problems; if the metal touched any sockets or a light switch, this hip feature wall, was turned into an electrical live wall! Today, the crème de la crème is walls covered with flakes of mica. Usually ground up for use in make up to create shimmer, mica is now the most expensive and glamorous way to cover your walls.

Leather and tapestry wall coverings were for the rich and noble, expensive and hard to produce, they would sound proof the room (to a certain extent), and add warmth. Before wall paper, there was no cheap alternative, and although wallpaper started of equally expensive, the prices soon came down and wallpaper became an integral part of any house. Wallpaper started off as small sheets of rag paper. These were hung up next to each other and matched up on all edges. On the most expert pieces the joins were very difficult to spot.
Paper had come from China, and at this time they were the leading experts on wallpaper. There was a craze for anything oriental, and many of the floral motifs and designs produced in the 16th, 17th and 18th century were influenced by oriental artworks of flowers, blossom, or geishas, sometimes drawn from real life. This is a reoccurring theme that designers always use in their work, even today. We look to eastern culture for inspiration with colours, and patterns, for wallpapers, fashion (John Galliano’s ‘New Look’ range, inspired by origami), or interior design. The printing of the designs were in two steps. The black outline would have been printed with a wooden block and then a stencil would have been used to fill in the colour, with either a sponge or hard paint brush. This was all done by cheap labour and so the colour may not have always registered and would have varied. The quality of these was rarely questioned as most of the wallpapers were designed for tall Victorian houses, and would not be seen in detail if at the top of the room (a freeze), and neither in great light, due to the use of gas lamps and candlelight. The size and colour of the design suggested where the wallpaper was to be hung; for example, rich colours and large scales for the study. The cost of the end product was increased because the paper size was no longer small sheets, but big rolls; and these rolls were not made to a standard size. Other popular designs in this period were murals of scenic landscapes. Trees were put at the edge of each roll of wallpaper, and the top third would be sky enabling the rolls to always match up, making them adaptable to different wall sizes. The paper was also covered with a ground to cover the seams.
By the mid 19th Century women wanted to buy floral patterns for their houses. The motifs were more stylised than they had been in the past, as it was not fashionable to have something 3D on your 2D walls. It was moving away from the realistic 3D murals, which were so popular in the past and moving towards, flat, unreal images of flowers and nature. This change was due to the embarrassing ‘defeat’ England encountered at ‘The Great Exhibition.’ The English were copying a lot of their designs from the French, however the French could do it better, and so at the exhibition, France walked away with most of the awards.
By the end of the 19th Century, tapestry hangings in front of doors were very popular. The wallpaper industry came back with printing onto grass, influenced again by the Chinese, and indeed the grass was bought from the Chinese. The colour of the paper varied due to the harvest.
Moving on towards the 20th Century, there was a shift in the purpose of wallpapers to more political papers, particularly in France during the French Revolution. They were mainly used in public buildings, using symbols, such as the shield, the colours of France or anything that was evocative of their history.
During the 1950’s, the rise in consumerism and advances in technology, made the bathroom a more prominent fixture in many peoples homes. The fashion was to decorate with fish wallpaper, or scenes with mermaids in. Tiles on the lower half and washable wallpaper on the top half.

I have been fascinated with buildings, castle and abbey ruins for a long time and here I could look at the shape and textures found in those environments. My initial ideas were a secret garden looking into a busy image and seeing something else there, as if looking through overgrown thorns, to an abandoned and secret world or buildings.
After taking hundreds of photos, of various ruins, Kirkstall Abbey, Fountains Abbey, Lowther Castle, Brough Castle and Penrith Castle, I began some initial drawings. After reading an article in ‘Elle Decoration’ on the upcoming designer Charlotte Mann (Below image), I experimented with larger scale drawings and a looser drawing style, using thicker pens.

As well as this ongoing experimentation with drawings, I started to use the actual photographs as pieces to work onto. Printing them onto fireproof paper and sewing straight onto the photo. Sewing ivy in various metallic threads was very affective. Looking at the work of Alice Kettle, I tried to overwork the sewing more than I had been, also trying to collage with my photos. These were still in rectangle shapes, as they were printed photos; however they could be hung side by side, as mentioned in the historical context in squares instead of rolls. I tried to layer separate images in a toile de joy composition and sewing ivy between them to bring them together however the photocopies were too blocky and dark. Trying it with drawn images worked better, but was still quite plain. In keeping with the sewn detail, I live traced an outline of lowther castle and filled it with block colour, then sewed the detail, like the windows and the turrets. Although the front didn’t look as good is I had imagined, just the sewn line on the back looked better. This lead to the idea of creating white on white layers. Sew onto white paper, with white thread, maybe some transparent foil and some white or tracing paper, or a mixture of these. I also added a little gold thread to accent some of the features of the castles, and secure the layers. This created tactile and textural wall coverings. Much more interesting than flat drawings. After finishing this I decided to leave these sewn experiments and go back to the beginning and do some more drawings to gain more ideas and shapes I could use. Again looking at Charlotte Mann and at continuous line, more detail and more materials, like ink and pen. Claire Caulfield’s (Image on left) pen and ink drawings of city locations capture such life and energy, which was hard to capture in my drawings as there was no movements, but the pen and ink gives a lovely line. I did try and add colour, as Caulfield does, however the black and white line drawings are more striking. I took my images into the print room and experiment with foiling, I photocopied my drawings, changing the scale, so they were almost abstract images. Once in the print room, I layered up transparent foils and gold and pewter colours on black background, which gave a gorgeous dark and textural pieces. Only odd windows and features could be made out. This is what I had been striving for, looking into something and seeing odd details, that could be a building, but gives a mystical secret garden. This is really what I was hoping for when I was thinking of the secret garden initially, but this is a much better way of producing it. Collage s not my strong point, as it is too messy for me, but at least I did try. It is more abstract that what I was thinking, however I am very pleased it is. I can see it now, as more of a feature wall pattern or even an all over covering, if the colours were lightened. My sewn white on white pieces were also looking better now I had added a pewter foil instead of the transparent, which unfortunately went a little yellow. Ivy was cut out of tracing paper, on the lazar cutter, and looked very interesting on its own as well as over the sew images.

After looking at contemporary designers, such as Claire Caulfield, Alice Kettle, and Charlotte Mann I have realised that anything goes. There are so many designers doing many different things and experimenting with so many different materials, and scale, historic materials and methods, or completely new and modern technology. I think I offer an abstract and tactile floral alternative, with my wall coverings. Still beautiful pieces, but different and adaptable for the interior space.