Arts and Crafts wallpaper

I've been thinking about wallpaper lately, looking at beautiful William Morris designs on the Internet. If you mention wallpaper, people think of the cool designs you can download for computer screens. But old-fashioned wallpaper used to be in almost every house when I was growing up. A clean look is in for home decorating, and most would find wallpaper much too fussy and busy. Not to mention expensive! On top of the cost of the rolls, a paper hanger will charge several dollars a square foot, and that mounts up fast.

I remember my parents re-papering rooms in our old farmhouse every few years. Stores like Sears and Montgomery Wards had big wallpaper departments, where your Mom would page through books of samples while you hung out and got very bored. Patterns like ivy and flowers were popular, also geometric designs which were easier to "match." Paper wasn't pre-pasted then, so you had to mix up a big batch of wallpaper paste. Sounds like messy, hard work.

Not long ago, I found the journal I kept in England when we lived there 30 years ago. The decor in our old "flat" in Felixstowe was so awful I wrote about it: "Gold-patterned wallpaper with big plates, clashing drapes, blue furniture and a red rug. It's a terrible jumble of patterns and colors."

Definitely not William Morris! :-)

Here's a beautiful online store if you like to play around with decorating:

http://www.charlesrupertdesigns.com/index.php/collections/show/bird_vine

And just how exquisite traditional wallpaper can be!