"Scenic wallpaper inspires designers and collectors to dream their way not only into a bygone era, but also into a better one," wrote Walter Benjamin in 18th century Paris.
"From the earliest days of scenic wallpaper, the panoramic view...
...was intended to come full circle," noted Sotheby's catalog about a set of the same scenes in sepia tones. "In most cases the last length linked to the first: the circumference of the room would correspond to the total breadth of the landscape. Buyers were and are welcome to purchase one or two of the series."
Many editions were exported to England and North America in the 1830s, yet only 5 or 6 examples ofufour wallpaper preserved in such an excellent state exist in the world today.
"The origin of hand printed wallpaper is shrouded in mystery. The artists of the 1800s maintained extreme secrecy about their methods. Anyone who tried to enter the workshops to describe them encountered extreme difficulty." -- from Sotheby Catalog (A similar discretion is true of artists and printmakers today.)
T I M E L I N E
1776 - A Mediterranean Voyage - the talented artist J. B. Hilair records his travels along the Aegean coast with Count Choiseul-Gouffier on a cartography expedition to rediscover sites of ancient Greece
1782 - Paris - based on Hilair's drawings, 126 engravings appear in Choiseul-Gouffier's luxurious book, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece
1815 - Paris - based on the engravings, the atelier of Joseph Dufour produces 1000+ wallpaper woodcuts, hand painted and hand printed and perhaps entitled Les Scenes Turques
1830s - New York - dealers in New York and Boston import scenic wallpapers to North America
1931 - Paris to Dublin NH - our antique wallpaper scenes are removed from a home in Paris and brought in New York by the precursor of Sotheby, and installed in H.H. Richardson’s restoration of the Peabody and Stearns cottage, Stonlea in Dublin, New Hampshire
2008 - Dublin - Holly Alderman produces digital scans of the original scenes at Stonlea with state of the art scanners for museum quality reproductions
2009 - London - the scene of Smyrna is seen and purchased online for a flat in Belgravia by a designer working in Istanbul and Edinburgh; the originals are removed from Stonlea for conservation
2010 - Boston - CHARLES SPADA FABRICS & WALLPAPERS at BOSTON DESIGN CENTER presents Alderman's wall scenes as innovative custom papers, mirrors, fabrics and furniture. Contact: whitney@charlesspada.com, 617-204-9270.
Notes from Sotheby's Catalog
THESE ANTIQUE WALLPAPER panels illustrate a voyage of Count Choiseul-Gouffier along the Aegean coast in 1776.
Count Choiseul-Gouffier joined a cartographic survey of the Mediterranean to visit historic sites of ancient Greece, the land of Homer and Herod, to see what remained of the ancient cities, temples and Greek population, from Izmir (Smyrna) to Rhodes.
Upon his return to Paris in 1782 he wrote a monumental and luxurious book, Voyage Pittoresque de la Grece, with engravings based on the drawings by the talented artist Hilair who accompanied Count Choiseul-Gouffier on his travels. The engravings give exact but inverted topographical views of landscapes and of antique ruins. Count Choiseul-Gouffier became the King's ambassador to Constantinople (Istanbul) from 1784 until 1792. After the French Revolution, he returned to Paris in 1802, and published a second volume in 1809.
In 1815 he was made Minister of France, and his earlier work aroused new interest. The wallpaper manufacturer Dufour in Paris set out to print a panorama after some of the charming engravings in Volume 1. Over a thousand woodcuts had to be made to transform and enlarge the engravings to be printed as wallpaper. It was offered both en grisaille, or grays, and en sepia, browns.
The only recorded complete set of the wallpaper en sepia was sold at Sotheby's in London in 1991.
The originals are in climate controlled storage. Now for the first time, state of the art reproductions and variations are available at a fraction of the price of the originals.
A complete set of the Turkish Scenes en grisaille is on view at the Boultenhouse Heritage Centre in the Marine Room, in the port of Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada.
For more background and complete catalog notes for a set of sepia scenes, click: Sotheby's.
