Project report – wallpaper coverings
by Rachel Corcoran

Ever since wallpaper became widely available its status has been questioned: is it a background, foreground, art or design. There has probably never been more popular interest in pattern than is evident today. After what seems like decades of white walls, pattern on wallpaper and fabric is making a timely comeback in our interiors. Decorative wallpaper has been in production and on our walls for centuries now but there has never been such a rich variety of strongly patterned furnishings and fabric available than there is today. Design surrounds us wherever we look, it can vary from uncomplicated coloured squares of gingham to intricate and ornate birds and foliage on hand painted Chinese wallpaper. From our most ancient beginnings, it seems to be humans are instinctive when it comes to looking for pattern in our organic surroundings.
The term ‘ pattern’ can be defined as a design composed of one or more objects, images, shapes or devices. As the prehistoric man was still developing the basic necessities of life, the first paintings and objects appeared that show both geometric and pictorial designs arranged with well developed sense or order. One of the simplest and earliest of all patterns is the strip – horizontal or vertical lines running parallel to one another. These would have been individual sheets decorated using woodcut patterns and black ink on colourless paper. As the stripe pattern evolves into check or pleat the representations of the organic world also improved in complexity, from the earliest graphic depictions of birds and animals in pre-Columbian weavings to the heavily stylized roses and lilies this travelled through the middle ages and onwards to the brightly coloured folio forms of the 1940’s and 50’s. This was heavily influenced by abstract art.
Temple Newsam is one of the great historic estates in England holding a lot of famous wallpapers some even hung during the Regency period, in the 1820s, others were Victorian, dating from the 1880s or 90s. In the 1970’s they discovered hundreds of fragmented pieces of historical wallpaper within the house. This Tudor–Jacobean mansion has national and international reputation by using the historic fragments of the wallpaper and re-printing them to give the antique and precisely historic appearance it would have had around 250 years ago.
The talk at temple Newsam informed us of a lot of historical facts including how the paper was also used for a number of things other than decorating walls, in some cases they were used to line chests at the bottom of your bed. In the late 17th century people chose to repeat often using floral patterns but made a lot different from papers sold today otherwise known as ‘paper hangings’. They were often seen as a replacement for fabrics and could be pinned rather than glued using flour and water paste or rabbit glue onto the walls. Another difference used in the 17th and 18th century that was different to how we produce wallpaper today was hand crafted woodblock printing. The block was cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in 'black' at the original surface level this required every printed piece to have a blank margin on one or both of the sides.
William Morris is one of the leading artists associated with the arts and crafts movement. He had strong principals and believes in ‘truth to materials’ is the simplicity of art. William Morris was inspired by the design of flat patterns, derived from organic forms, particularly fruits, flowers and birds. All his designs are hand crafted from wooden blocks. Tulip and the snakehead fritillaries was one of William Morris bestselling design. Flowers have the desirability as a design motif lies in a combination of colours and composition. I have been strongly influenced by the vintage look florals of William Morris and the countrified and modern aesthetic of Clare Coles. There is a comfort in a contemporary design that is reminiscent, yet different to an historical one.
When looking through the brief what appealed most to me as a starting point was Hortus Botanicus meaning floral, naturals and organics. Contemporary florals are timeless and provide design inspiration for countless years, dating back to the to 18th century hand painted Chinese panels or English flocks which rivalled silk damasks. Flowers and foliage has been one of the earliest patterns along with geometric stripes, white lily’s signify purity of the virgin to medieval Christians and white and red roses was an ancients symbol of love for many cultures. Flowers have never gone out of fashion, clothing or interior decoration. I focused on mainly white Lilly’s and orchids as they have elegance and simplicity in the structure and appearance. My research towards this started at Bents garden centre in my hometown of Warrington, I specifically went to this garden centre as I knew they would have a variety of fascinating flowers more so than other garden centres as Bents is known for its quality and upmarket floral. I documented them by taking lots of pictures then narrowed it down to flowers I could relate to and enjoyed to draw such as lily’s and orchids as lily’s are bold and simple but when crossing with delicate detailed orchids I started to realise you get an appealing design .
I started out by hand drawing lily’s, I invested in some real lily’s as I knew the drawings would look much more realistic if I included shadow and shape which would have been the same from every angle if I would of just used my photographs. I did a few or my drawings large scale and experimented with different materials such as biros, collage, black ink and stick. I used these as I knew these would all give me a different outcome and would get the ball rolling as I knew were I wanted to go with these.
In the first week of the project we got to know all about gesso and boy did it smell but once you got past that I found I had quite a flare for it. As gesso is a preservative made by Rabbit skin glue it can either be bought in powder form or in larger chunks. The preparation involves using the correct proportion of water to glue to achieve the correct consistency and strength. It was then heated at boiling point hence the smell. I began by using a wooden block as my starting point and slowly layering it up with materials such as my own drawn pieces to photocopies, foiling to a preserved lily. You could basically take it anywhere so I decided to experiment to the max. I found when layering up if I used too much gesso that I could no longer see my image I got it straight under the taps and rubbed it off gently. I also found by using sandpaper to scratch into a thin layer of gesso and scratch into my image it gave it the authentic, worn away look I was after. I really enjoyed this process as it gave me the chance to work messy but I loved the overall outcome.
I used the influence of my 2 main inspiring artist Clare Coles and Louise body to help me recreate my own design just using some of there processes and techniques. This is were I began to include stitch and collage into my drawings, I started by stitching orchids into my sketch book as a background then I included one of my photos of an orchid and gesso over it revealing the image but in a less harsher way, I liked this effect as experimented more gessoing and image but on a larger scale then stitching over parts and leaving it. I liked it so much that this one eventually turned into a screen print which I was quite impressed with as I had seen it through all its processes. I then moved onto cutting little papers up I found lying around my home and collage in them into my drawing, used a bit of gesso then stitching on top of to finish the piece off. I like this technique as it show the more delicate side of using gesso as paint not a preservative I liked how the tint papers had a lot going on but didn’t distract the eye to much from the over all piece. Although I was attracted to the delicate stitch and collaging based on Clare Coles I loved the bold but fragile pieces of Louise Body’s flat prints. I interpreted this in m own way bearing in mind she uses Photoshop and paint to produce her designs I went for the ink splodges as they went on thick but dripped leaving elegant, narrow lines behind reminding me of stems from a flower. They were also ideal for empty backgrounds as I hate working on plain paper they were fast to put on and left unique lines as you don’t always know what you’re going to expect.
I wanted to broaden my visual research, with only two floral’s it was very restricting so I included more research and took a trip to Meanwood valley urban farm based in Leeds. I went with a much opened mind looking at the animals, wildlife, plants the scenery, wild flowers and veg but I realized the research I already had on lily’s and orchids was pretty substantial and most of all I enjoyed what I was creating and aiming for I just felt as if I was pretty restricted on the two flowers but I just incorporated some wildflowers and veg plants into my experiments and found I had much more information to work with. Overall the farm helps me focus on what I enjoyed and if anything influenced me to carry on. I also finished developing my work using single line stitch and biro on tracing, watercolors and stitch, ink and orchids it gave me and understanding of what was successful such as processes, images and composition.
Another two processes and techniques I found interesting throughout my project was my elective and foiling. While attending the digital photography elective I have been able to use the studio facilities experimenting with spot lights creating shadows. I also got to learn how do professional close- up pictures hiring out a tripod and extended lenses to pursue my inspiration in digital photography and capturing close details of floral’s. Since attending the flock and foils workshop in the second week I found I really enjoyed the foil process as it was not time consuming and gave the precise metallic outcome I wanted. I used foil quite a bit sewing into it gessoing on wooden blocks, layering on top of a collage and generally manipulating and experimenting in anyway possible to find the best way of using it. As foil has dated back from the 18th century I aimed to produce a paper that consisted of contemporary design but give it my own spin by using the concept of metallic foiling techniques, layered with the tradition of gesso.
In the fifth week started to consider the latest trends and colour schemes for my overall final pieces. I decided to use digital pixelated prints in monotone I did this by creating a drawing of my florals layering it with stitch, gesso, foils and biro. I then scanned into the computer manipulated parts of the image and changed the bitmap and grey scale to create a half tone. My inspiration was based on high street shops such as Topshop which had loads of pixelated floral dresses as its key this spring plus big designers Basso & Brooke had the runway for the spring/ summer collection of 2009 covered in pixelated elaborate floral dresses and jumpsuits. I found this gave my project a twist from the traditional gesso college I created on brown paper revealing my print underneath with stitch, this piece was inspired by Clare Coles. Overall I was pleased with my finish pieces even though they don’t look like a collection but in many ways they all relate to one another from the foiling to the monotone theme to the prints and how I have used the same print and manipulated it with greyscale, stitch and gesso. This is my best project so far and I feel I have gain such a wide variety of information and experience with flocking, foiling and gesso. I will defiantly be using more of these in projects to come along with greyscale and leading artist Clare Cole and Louise body.