Hand made wallpaper

Last year I was lucky enough to be awarded an ISS institute Fellowship to research printing techniques for wallpaper. I spent a week at Allyson McDermotts studio in Gloucestershire learning about hand made wallpaper. Her studio is set in the grounds of her beautiful Tudor house.

Allyson McDermotts House

  I only found out about her work when I read an article in the December 06 issue of World of Interiors, [I love that magazine!] and she was happy to let me work in her studio for a week.

 It was a great week and I learnt so much. Early wallpapers were actually just sheets of paper stuck on the wall, this progressed to pieces about 3 metres long, [this was because the paper was hung above the Dado], and was made up of smaller sheets of hand made paper stuck together with rabbit skin glue. 

hand-blocked wallpapers

These sheets were then "grounded" with hand made distemper.

This is wonderful, it has a life of its own, so different from modern paints. Apparently it's to do with the amount of pigment in it.

 

sheets of wallpaper grounded with distemper and hung to dry.

Allyson has developed her own paint range based on historical colours. The colours are lovely and contain 4-5 times more pigment than normal, so look amazing. 

beautiful colours!

Next came the hand blocking- it's pretty physical and very time consuming! The majority of  blocks are still hand carved in the traditional way from pear wood, which makes them very heavy. 

hand carved printing blocks

While I was here Allyson was sampling for a paper for Temple Newsam in Leeds. This was a

 flocked paper, which is even more tricky as the design has to printed on with a special glue and  then immediately put into the flocking box before it dries out. 

 block ready to print with

There is something very special about hand printed wallpapers as opposed to machine printed. They have a texture made by the ink sitting on the surface rather than being part of the paper which happens with most machines, apart from the Surface Print machines, [more about that in a future post], of which there are only a couple left in operation in the world.

Allyson also undertakes a lot of conservation work and this is one of a pair of antique panels, dating to around the 17th century, [from what I can remember]. 

love the chalky colours.

After experiencing the whole process of creating hand made wallpaper it became very obvious as to why it's so expensive, but so worth it!