Wallpaper
Category
Architecture / Features & Decoration
Date
1850 - 1960
Materials
paper, distemper, printing ink, emulsion paint
Measurements
810 x 540 mm
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Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire
NT 82682
Summary
Several layers of wallpaper and newspaper lining paper. The lining paper, applied directly to the wooden structure of the cupboard, consists of three different newspapers, two dated 1905, called The Sunday Companion and The Christian Herald and Signs of Our Times, and one dated 1921, called The Farmer and Stockbreeder. The majority of the wallpaper fragments are surface printed patterns in distemper on poor quality, machine made wove paper, in a combination of fall-on and in-register design. One layer is a sanitary paper, intaglio printed with oil based inks, on similar poor quality paper to the others. The papers date from the late 19th century to the early 20th century. The top distemper layer has been over-painted with a blue and subsequently a yellow water based emulsion. There is also a collection of smaller fragments from the smaller section removed from the opposite side of the cupboard. Another smaller section has been kept intact in its original layers.
Provenance
Original wallpaper layers in situ when the cottage was acquired by the National Trust in 1974.