Dating wallpapers
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Any of the following features can be helpful in dating a wallpaper: the type of paper, the style of the pattern, the production method, the sample’s location and context in a building, numbers and marks printed on the margins or the reverse of the paper.
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You may find the following useful:
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Dating wallpapers using registration numbers and diamond marks (downloadable PDF)
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Significant collections of dated examples which can be searched online include:
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Victoria and Albert Museum, London:
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?id_category=THES48878&page=1&page_size=15
The Whitworth, Manchester
https://whitworthcollections.manchester.ac.uk/collections/?s=wallpaper&view=grid
Heritage New Zealand / Pouhere Taonga
https://collection.heritage.org.nz/explore
Musee de Papier Peint, Rixheim, France
https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/recherche
Historic New England:
https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/wallpaper/
Cooper Hewitt Collections, Washington D.C.
https://www.si.edu/collections/cooper-hewitt?edan_fq%5B0%5D=object_type%3A%22Wall%20coverings%22
Publications which offer extensive catalogues of dated wallpapers include (some of these are out of print):
Wallpapers: a History and Illustrated Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Charles Oman, Jean Hamilton, 1982
Wallpapers at Temple Newsam 1635 to the present, Anthony Wells-Cole and Barbara Walker, 2018
London Wallpapers, Their manufacture and use, 1690-1840, Treve Rosoman, 2009
Bitten by Witch Fever: Wallpaper & Arsenic in the Nineteenth-Century Home , Lucinda Hawksley, 2016
Wallpaper in America: From the Seventeenth Century to World War I , Catherine Lynn, 1980
Wallpaper in New England: Selections from the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Richard Nylander, 1986