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Flock Retro Wallpaper
The status of flock wallpaper has undergone a dramatic transformation
over the space of three centuries. Once a luxury product used by
the wealthy in the grandest apartments, it has declined into cliché,
most familiar (at least in Britain) as nothing more than a commonplace
decoration in Indian restaurants where it is intended to evoke an
atmosphere of Colonial grandeur.
Portion of wallpaper with rococo floral design in flock on a diapered
ground, about 1760. Museum no. E.1961-1934
Portion of wallpaper with rococo floral design in flock on a diapered
ground, about 1760. Museum no. E.1961-1934 (click image for larger
version)
Flock paper was originally invented to imitate cut-velvet hangings.
Flock - powdered wool, a waste product of the woollen cloth industry
- had been applied to cloth in the early 17th century. It is not
clear when the first flock papers were produced, but trade cards
and advertisements show that flock papers were available by the
late 17th century. Edward Butling's card of around 1690 declares
that he 'Maketh and Selleth all sorts of Hangings for Rooms', including
'Flock-work', at his premises in Southwark. The advertisement for
Abraham Price's Blue Paper Warehouse, Aldermanbury, around 1715,
shows panels at the extreme left and right with Baroque-style patterns
which are almost certainly flocked. However, some of the earliest
flocks seem to have employed quite simple linear designs; a green
flock of oak stems and lattice from Welwick House, South Lynn, Norfolk,
around 1715-20, is typical of this light style.
By the 1730s many flock papers that were direct imitations of damask
or velvet began to appear. The range of patterns available seems
to have been relatively limited, and one particularly magnificent
design has been found in several locations. This was a crimson flock
on a deep pink ground, which has faded to yellowish buff on most
surviving examples. This pattern was hung in the offices of His
Majesty's Privy Council, Whitehall, London, around 1735; it was
also used in the Queen's Drawing Room in Hampton Court Palace, and
in several town and country houses, including Christchurch Mansion,
Ipswich, and Clandon Park, Surrey, also in the 1730s. The same pattern
in green flock was hung around 1745 in the Picture Gallery at Temple
Newsam, Leeds. The design itself has been traced back to an Italian
brocade and a damask curtain, both in the Department of Textiles
and Dress at the V&A.
The flock papers proved extremely durable - certainly more so than
the textile hangings they imitated - and so although they were relatively
expensive in comparison to other contemporary wallpapers, they were
nevertheless good value for money. The flock papers had an advantage
over textile wall coverings in that the turpentine in the adhesive
used for fixing the flock kept them free from moths. In the 1740s
a green cut velvet for the Drawing Room at Longford Castle, Wiltshire,
cost 25s a yard, and a green silk damask for the Gallery 12s. A
flock paper supplied to the Duke of Bedford in 1754 cost only 4s.
Even allowing for the fact that there were several qualities of
flock available, and that 4s probably represented the cheaper end
of the scale, a handsome, richly coloured, long-lasting flock paper
compared favourably with the alternatives.
Portion of flock wallpaper from Clandon Park, Surrey, about 1735.
Museum no. E.31-1971
Portion of flock wallpaper from Clandon Park, Surrey, about 1735.
Museum no. E.31-1971 (click image for larger version)
The designs themselves also proved to have a long life, with several
of the large-scale formal patterns - notably the so-called 'Privy
Council flock' (now usually known as 'Amberley', the name given
to Cole's reproduction of the pattern) - continuously available
to the present day. Although flock papers have been produced in
every passing style, the designs of the early 18th century have
survived as a sort of gold-standard for good taste and for an approach
to decorating which stands outside fashion.
The grandest flock papers have a large pattern repeat, often 6 or
7 feet in length. Papers on this scale were intended for large formal
spaces - the public and semi-public rooms of great houses. Sometimes,
papers like Réveillon's were flocked in more than one colour
which produced a richer, more luxurious effect. Large-scale Baroque
patterns symmetrical around a vertical axis were appropriate in
formal settings and large rooms but were not used in more modestly
sized private rooms. For these rooms small-scaled flocked patterns
were available, ranging from simple diaper patterns to asymmetric
floral designs similar to contemporary silks. A paper of this kind,
with a yellow ground, blue-stencilled colour and dark-blue flock,
was used in a bedroom at Clandon.
The designs of flock papers were swiftly adapted to changing fashions.
The earliest known flock paper, from Saltfleet Manor, Lincolnshire,
had a formalised design with architectural elements and typical
17th-century decorative motifs; the same paper was hung at Ivy House,
in the Worcester Cathedral precincts, in panels alternating with
lengths of embossed leather, another wall covering fashionable at
the time. Chinoiserie designs were also produced in flock - a red-brown
flock on a cream ground with a double-width repeat, from Hurlcote
Manor, Easton Neston, is a fascinating melange of Indian, Chinese
and English motifs. From the 1740s onwards the informal asymmetric
style of French rococo was translated into flock. A particularly
fine example with crimson ground, block printed in white, with mica,
and flocked in crimson, was hung in a parlour chamber in the Sarah
Orne Jewitt House, South Berwick, Maine, around 1775-80.
Portion of two flock wallpapers, one pasted over the other, about
1760-70. Museum no. E.596A, 596B-1985
Portion of two flock wallpapers, one pasted over the other, about
1760-70. Museum no. E.596A, 596B-1985 (click image for larger version)
A number of these small-pattern flocks were hung in bedrooms - a
blue flock was used in a bedroom at the Chateau of the Bishops of
Dax at St-Pandclon, France, in the mid-1770s; and a formal diaper
pattern, crimson flock on a pink ground, in a second-floor bedroom
at Temple Newsam, Leeds. Elsewhere they were used in parlours and
drawing rooms. A popular formal pattern with rococo elements, blue
flock on a lighter blue ground, was hung in the Drawing Room at
Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, between 1760 and 1765. A version
flocked in red and yellow on a pink ground, with diaper filling
in white, was hung in two first-floor rooms of Sir William Robinson's
house at 26 Soho Square in 1759-60 - the paper cost 9s per 12-yard
piece, and 414 yards were supplied; it is described in Chippendale's
itemised bill as 'Crimson Embossed paper'. The term 'embossed',
which often appears on trade cards, seems to have been another name
for flock because, like embossing, flocking produced a raised surface
pattern.
In 'A Complete Body of Architecture', published in 1756, Isaac Ware
specified that the first-floor rooms of a London house 'better than
the common kind' should be for entertaining, and may include the
dining and the drawing room. The use of a handsome flock paper would
therefore have been appropriate to the probable functions of the
rooms in which it was found in 26 Soho Square. However, it is unlikely
that either room hung with flock would have been used for dining
- flock papers tended to retain the smell of food, as well as gathering
dirt and dust, and were therefore generally considered to be unsuitable
in this context. This same paper was, it seems, supplied to Sir
Rowland Winn for a bedroom at Nostell Priory; Chippendale's invoice
for 4 March 1768 specifies '8 Pieces Norfolk Crimson and Yellow
Flock'.
Generally speaking, it seems that the scale of the flock pattern
was related to the size of the room, although there are occasional
examples of over-sized patterns hung to overwhelming effect in small
rooms. A bedroom of the Webb house in Wethersfield, Connecticut,
was hung with a red flock with a rococo floral pattern in 1781,
rather late for the style. Hung from coving to skirting, it has
a disturbing effect in such a small, low-ceilinged room. It was
supposedly hung in preparation for a visit by George Washington,
and it may he that the status of the prospective guest had more
influence on the choice of paper than did the size of the room itself.
A similarly outsize red rococo flock was hung in a bedroom in the
Palazzo Salis Bondo in Switzerland around 1775. In this case its
dominance was moderated by framing it in panels, with a lighter
decoration below the dado, over the doors, and so on. On the whole,
clients, or their decorators, did take room size into account when
selecting a paper. Mrs Kenyon, describing the furnishing of her
new house in Lincoln's Inn Fields (1774), wrote: 'The entrance is
a broad lobby well lighted by a window over the door ... it is wainscot
painted white. The dining room is 21' X 17' wide and is to be new
papered this week. The paper is to be a blue small patterned flock
... Our lodging room is hung with a green flock paper.'
Portion of wallpaper with matching border, about 1750-75. Museum
no. E.528-2001
Portion of wallpaper with matching border, about 1750-75. Museum
no. E.528-2001 (click image for larger version)
Flocks were generally more expensive than other block-printed papers
and most surviving examples come from the houses of the wealthy,
although some exceptions are known. A paper of around 1760 with
blue-flocked foliage and block-printed white leaves on a light blue
ground was found in a house at 80 St John Street, Clerkenwell. The
house itself was built in the 1750s and occupied from 1753 to 1790
by a distiller, John Watson. The area was not fashionable, and was
inhabited in the latter half of the century mostly by tradesmen
conducting their businesses on the premises.
For those who could not afford the real thing, mock flock paper
was available; these papers copied the styles and motifs of flock
papers with solid block-printed areas in dense black pigment on
a diapered or 'mosaic' ground to give an effective illusion of true
flock. A good example (now in the English Heritage archive) was
retrieved from the first-floor back room of 17 Albemarle Street,
London. This was a good address, in a fashionable part of town,
so it is quite surprising to find a 'cheap' imitation in what would
have been one of the public rooms for entertaining guests.
Such papers were usually considered more appropriate for bedrooms
- for example, although Sir William Robinson had an expensive double
flock made for the whole of his first floor at 26 Soho Square, he
had a much cheaper green mock flock hung in one of the second-floor
bedrooms at a cost of £3 2s in April and May 1760.
Cost, colour and durability were the key factors in the choice of
wall coverings. Lady Margaret Heathcote writing to her father, 1st
Earl of Hardwicke, in 1763, when she was choosing a wallpaper on
his behalf, found several advantages in the mock flock papers. Having
described some of the options, including an 'Indian paper ... [at]
treble the price' of a flock, she explains:
'a Cloth paper can only with that furniture be Green, or Green and
white as now; plain Green I doubt you would find very dark, and
there is some difficulty in putting up a new paper of the same colours
as the former one to vary the pattern so as it may not seem the
very same; I have therefore ordered a pattern in Mosaick, Green
upon a cloth colour ground in imitation of real flock (wch. they
tell me in that light colour wears better than the real).'
Flocks continued to reflect the changing styles in textile design,
and remained in demand through a sequence of architectural styles.
Imposing formal patterns were still being designed in the 1820s,
alongside lighter informal styles. Flocking was used to embellish
designs in every style, from florals to borders with Egyptian motifs
and troumpe-l'oeil printed 'draperies'.
The 19th-century flocks were even more convincing as substitutes
for cut-velvet than their predecessors, thanks to a further elaboration
of the production process whereby the flocked areas were blind-stamped
to give an embossed finish. A crimson flock of this kind with an
imposing pomegranate design survives in two of the State Rooms at
Lydiard Park, Wiltshire; a similar red flock was hung by Lady Hertford
in the Picture Gallery at Temple Newsam in 1826 or 1827, where it
remained until 1940.
Wallpaper border in the neo-classical style, about 1800-25. Museum
no. E.2242-1974
Wallpaper border in the neo-classical style, about 1800-25. Museum
no. E.2242-1974 (click image for larger version)
Red flock has, since the mid-18th century, been a favourite decoration
for picture galleries, or for any grand room hung with Old Master
paintings. The colour and texture can be a highly effective foil
to gilt-framed pictures. In 1748 Thomas Bromwich was paid £45
16s by Sir Matthew Fetherstonhaugh at Uppark, apparently for supplying
and hanging a red flock very similar to the 'Flower'd Red Paper'
hung at Felbrigg, Norfolk, during Paine's alterations of 1751-6.
The original red flock in the Red Drawing Room at Uppark was replaced
by another, also in red, during refurbishments in the 1850s.
Artists themselves certainly subscribed to the general view that
red was the best background to pictures. In 1813 the painter Sir
Thomas Lawrence P.R.A. wrote of his house at 65 Russell Square:
'... thus I suffer a Yellow Paper to remain that I know is hurtful
to my Pictures. I should have suffered it in my Painting Room but
... it is now a rich crimson Paper with a Border'.
The 18th-century English flock papers were renowned for their superior
quality. They were exported to Continental Europe, notably France,
where papiers d'Angleterre were favoured by wealthy individuals
such as Madame de Pompadour, who used English flock papers in her
apartments at Versailles and in the Chateau de Champs. And like
other English wallpapers, flocks were exported to America. Advertisements
in the American press from the early 1760s included 'Flock', 'velvet'
or 'Damask': both of the latter terms were used to describe flocked
wall-papers. However, they did not suit all customers. Lady Skipwith,
an émigrée from England, wrote in 1795 from Virginia
to her agent in London: 'I am very partial to papers of only one
color, or two at most - velvet paper [flock] I think looks too warm
for this country.'
The luxurious aristocratic associations of flock papers continued
into the mid-19th century. Many of the design reformers (see 'Design
Reform') produced flocked wallpaper patterns. Owen Jones produced
a number of elaborate papers - an 1867 example in the Moorish style
is block printed in bold colours, embossed and flocked. A.W. N.
Pugin, whose papers employed Gothic and medieval motifs, often very
simple and severe, also designed sumptuous flock papers. He believed
that flock wallpapers were suitable as a medium for designs in the
modern Gothic style because they were 'admirable substitutes for
ancient hangings'.
Wallpaper border with Egyptian motifs, 1806. Museum no. E.2259-1966
Wallpaper border with Egyptian motifs, 1806. Museum no. E.2259-1966
(click image for larger version)
Pugin designed all the papers for the Palace of Westminster; a book
of samples compiled by Crace & Son, 1851-4, shows the variety
of styles, and gives details of where each was hung. The simplest
two-colour block prints were used in servants' bedrooms, whereas
the flock papers (often embellished with gold) were hung in the
state and public rooms, such as the Royal Gallery and the Conference
Room (now part of the Members' Dining Room), and in the apartments
of senior officials. For example, a red, gold and olive version
of the 'Tapestry' design was used in the Queen's Robing Room in
the House of Lords and in the Dining Room of the Sergeant-at-Arms
in the House of Commons. Pugin made concerted efforts to promote
his wallpaper designs to a wider market, and encouraged Crane to
advertise his papers in The Builder in 1851. However, the majority
of his designs, and in particular the large-scale flocks, were entirely
unsuitable to a domestic setting, both in scale and because they
were thought by his contemporaries to be 'too ecclesiastical and
traditional in character'.
Charles Eastlake's influential 'Hints on Household Taste', first
published in 1868, advanced some strongly expressed opinions about
wallpaper, and condemned illusionistic and pictorial patterns, however
he defended flocks on the grounds that 'at ordinary shops [they]
are the best in design, because they can represent nothing pictorially'.
But by the later 19th century flocks were well and truly out of
fashion, casually dismissed or roundly condemned by successive writers
of guides to interior decoration. Colonel Edis was particularly
severe: 'I can conceive of nothing more terrible than to be doomed
to spend one's life in a house furnished after the fashion of twenty
years ago. Dull monotonous walls, on which garish flock papers of
the vulgarest possible design, stare one blankly in the face with
patches here and there of accumulated dirt and dust ... if the flock
paper be red, we had red curtains hung on a gigantic pole, like
the mast of a ship ...' A writer in the Art Journal in 1889 concurred
with this pejorative view of flock papers: 'It is seldom now that
one encounters the gaudily gilt monstrosities ... or the heavily
loaded 'flocks' shedding everywhere their poisonous dust.'
Cleanliness had by now become something of an obsession with the
Victorians, and lighter colours and washable 'sanitary' papers were
supplanting the dark velvety flocks. For those who advised on interior
design and household management, such as Mrs Becton, flocks had
a place only in the library, conventionally a sombrely furnished
masculine room, or as a foil to pictures since they 'throw up oil
paintings to a marvel'. This advice is reiterated by the anonymous
author of 'Artistic Homes', or 'How to Furnish with Taste' (1880),
where Woollams flock papers are specifically recommended.
Dark, gloomy, a hindrance to cleanliness and a hazard to health
- the fashion for flock paper was finally in decline, though as
a writer in 'The Builder' observed in 1877, 'This movement in the
direction of good taste is, perhaps, hardly as general as is sometimes
supposed ... it has hardly reached the mass of the trading classes
at all ... and perhaps there are not a few among the professedly
more cultured classes who are still sublimely indifferent to the
design of their tables and chairs, their carpets and wallpapers.'
Certainly the prejudice against flocks amongst the design pundits
did not result in their immediate disappearance from the market.
Designs continued to he produced, including papers by Morris, Crane
and other fashionable designers of so-called 'art wallpapers'. And
customers at Cowtan & Son continued to order flocks well into
the 1920s, in defiance or in ignorance of these critical injunctions
against them.
Flocks are still produced today, using rayon flock applied by a
flock gun, but the market is more or less limited to restoration
projects in historic buildings
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