Paper Trails

Museum archives and historic stately homes are mines of decorative wallpaper designs that are ripe for reinterpretation

- VICTORIA MAW

In an old factory near Accrington, Lancashire, an enormous cast-iron surface printing machine, dating back to the early 1900s, is in full flow. It is printing wallpaper for 1838 Wallcoverings collection, which is being produced in collaboration with the V&A (the brand's name references the year the first such wallpaper machine was invented, just a few miles away). Much of the sound of the machinery is drowned out by the constant din from ovens that sit above the printer, helping to dry the paper in less than a minute. All of the paints used in the design have been mixed by hand in buckets and colour-matched by an expert eye. During the printing process, the paper will travel around 70m and in just a couple of hours the machine will print around 200 rolls.

This process adds texture and tactility to the V&A collection, which saw nine of the museum's treasures - from a 1920s Asiatic-inspired chinoiserie design to a Walter Crane artwork featuring a macaw transformed into wallpaper. The unique character of surface-printed paper is largely down to 'treeing', a term that refers to sections of visible paint ridges, explains James Watson, managing director of 1838. His family wallpaper-printing experience goes back four generations. The effect imitates hand-painting and looks particularly striking in the case of Eden, an Arts and Crafts-era cactus design that was originally a woodblock-printed paper. 'Surface-printing is a continuation of block-printing,' he says. You get that same look.'