WHS Symposium ‘Art and Wallpaper’, June 11th 2025

Over 50 WHS members and guests joined together for our online symposium on June 11^th. It was hugely well received, with one attendee pronouncing it ‘terrific’. The agenda contained a fascinating variety of presentations from art practitioners, academics, researchers and enthusiasts, each with a distinctly different way of interpreting the theme. The presentations were so rich in detail and scope that this overview can only pick out a few highlights, but generally it was agreed to be a fantastic day of scholarship and insight.

A still from Lisa Reihana’s video based on ‘Les sauvages de la mer pacifique’

Jean-Pierre Dalbér on Wikimedia Commons

The day started with two award-winning artists – Lisa Reihana, joining us all the way from New Zealand, and Jennifer Trouton, based in Belfast – examining wallpaper histories through narratives very personal to each of them. Lisa had taken Dufour’s luxurious panoramic paper ‘Les sauvages de la mer pacifique’, first exhibited 200 years ago after Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific, and interrogated its complex colonial message and portrayal of the noble savage. After seven years of experimentation with green screen technology she was able to show us an astounding animation of the wallpaper in which the main characters danced and interacted against a utopian Tahitian background in an inversion of traditional colonial history. Jennifer, by contrast, explained how she took inspiration from her late grandmother’s house to document abandoned buildings through the shadows left on wallpaper. She showed how her wallpaper designs tell powerful stories about the harsher histories of Irish women – famine, emigration and illegal abortion - subverting Toile de Jouy designs to include the starving and the homeless and incorporating everyday objects and plants, both curative and harmful.

‘17th-century Dutch interior with gold leather hangings’, Pieter de Hooch, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Professor Clare Taylor gave a fascinating presentation on the portrayal of gilt leather wallpapers in paintings, explaining through both 17th-century Northern European artworks and 19th-century paintings how these papers served as signifiers of newly acquired commercial wealth, as well as fulfilling artists’ interest in portraying material objects and using the gilt papers as a geometrical backdrop to their work. Jo Banham then took A Young Teacher by Rebecca Solomon to explore morality and design in mid-Victorian England, using the wallpaper depicted to illustrate the views of Pugin and Owen Jones, who promoted so-called ‘true principles’ of design, where correct proportions and flat stylised pattern were aligned with high moral values, contrasting it with Holman Hunt’s The Awakening Conscience where the ‘deceitful’ wallpaper echoes the predicament of the female protagonist.

‘The Awakening Conscience’, William Holman Hunt, Tate Britain

Staying with the reforming Victorians, Dr Wendy Andrews looked at the lectures and writings of Victorian wallpaper manufacturers J G Crace and Mawer Cowtan, who argued, through the newly established Decorative Arts Society, that English manufacturers must improve the quality of their artistic talent if they were to equal the glories of the 18^th-century paper stainers, emphasising the need for state support to encourage excellence, as they had witnessed in France.

A Bacchanalian Revel before a Term, Nicolas Poussin, National Gallery London

Dr Astrid Arnold-Wegener illustrated how luxury wallpapers, such as those by Dufour, sometimes espoused the style of a certain artist, such as Poussin, or actually quoted works of art in their designs, remodelling them and taking particular care to remove all depictions of nudity or Bacchanalian excess.

Marbled paper by Tirzah Garwood, 1930s

Image courtesy of Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections

We were in awe of the research shared by Dr Elizabeth Cowling who had taken the collages of Picasso, Gris and Braque and tracked down many of the mass-market faux bois wallpapers used in the artworks to their original sources, as well as examining their own interpretations of the wood effects. Lucy Ellis looked at the artists of Great Bardfield in the 1920s and ‘30s and the quirky, humorous wallpapers produced by Edward Bawden and his friends, questioning whether Tirzah Garwood’s beautiful marbled papers might have gained greater commercial success if, as a woman, she had not been expected to combine her art with household chores and childrearing.

Dr Zoe Hendon finished the day for us with  a fascinating delve into the world of contemporary artist David Mabb, whose works weave Russian constructivist patterns into William Morris designs, subverting the famous wallpapers whilst bringing back to the fore Morris’ all-important socialist values.

Our thanks go to Jo Banham for the original concept for this symposium and all the presenters, coordinators and behind-the-scenes administrators and troubleshooters who ensured a smooth and highly enriching day for all of us.

A recording of the symposium will soon be available to purchase in the WHS online shop.

Lucy Ellis