![]() A plain painted wall can more readily serve as the ground for prints, paintings and other hangings. ![]() I find that wallpapers can limit what else is hung on the walls. ![]() It creates a heavy-enough effect to support digging into a big, juicy steak.) (Flock wallpaper is paper that features a pattern or design which mimics the look of velvet. However, it was in questionable taste, even oppressive, featuring a heavily flocked red wallpaper. In my life as a public relations guy promoting restaurants, I once represented a low-priced steakhouse in New York City that prided itself on its interior décor. Yet, it was this very popularity that led to wallpaper being regarded as the poor relative of the decorative arts. But by the beginning of the 20 th century, it was being used everywhere – in hallways, kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms and was popular in both the wealthiest and poorest homes. Starting in the 16 th century, the early wall papers were used to decorate the insides of cupboards and smaller rooms in merchants’ houses rather than the grand houses of the aristocracy. The first Chinese wallpapers were of birds, flowers and landscapes painted on that rice paper. Smoother linen fibers later replaced rice, so that painting and printing on paper became possible. They are said to have pasted rice papers on to walls as far back as the Qin dynasty, a couple of hundred years before Christ. So where did wallpaper come from? The Chinese have the honor of inventing wallpaper. (I’m sure, leaving fingerprints in the process.) I delighted in running my little fingers along the textured surface of the paper. One of my earliest memories was my dad applying wallpaper that was embossed to our living room in our row home in Philadelphia. I’m not so sure that I don’t miss camouflaging all of those sins. Prior to moving to Trump Park in Shrub Oak when it was spanking new and its wall surfaces were spanking smooth (they still are), I had always lived in older homes, even antique homes, where old walls offered a thousand sins to hide. I used to work many years ago with a woman who always wore a hat, indoors and out, saying that “a hat hides a thousand sins.” That applies to wallpaper as well.
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