flock free wallpaper: Discount Wallpaper

Discount Wallpaper History

Sit back for a moment and take a look at the room around you. If it’s wallpapered, then consider that it’s taken almost 2000 years, some nasty diseases and an unhealthy dose of arsenic to reach the point where you can enjoy your wallpaper without a) going bankrupt; and b) dying. Fabulous wallpaper, it seems, has a rather less fabulous past…

The Egyptians were the first to develop papyrus but it was the Chinese who first put their rice paper on the walls in around 200BC. By AD105 they had refined the practice by using rags instead of paper and the first wallpapers of the sort we might recognise today were introduced.

In the UK, the oldest known example of wallpaper comes from Christ’s College, Cambridge, during the reign of Henry VIII, and features a pomegranate design created with a woodcut.

Wallpaper, or ‘stained paper’ as it was alternatively known, was prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthiest households. Until 1802 wallpaper could only be printed in small squares which meant that a lot of labour was required to create the wallpaper in the first place, and even more was needed to apply it to the wall. The Countess of Suffolk spent £42 wallpapering one room in the 1750s when the average cost of a house was £12.

The introduction of a wallpaper tax in 1712 made wallpaper even more expensive unless you were crafty. The tax applied only to stained or coloured papers, so for 100 years or so there arose a healthy trade in decorating rooms in plain paper to avoid the tax, and then stencilling the paper by hand once it was in place.

Manufacturing wallpaper was an unhealthy business. There appears to have been little concern over where the rags that were mulched down came from, leaving labourers with an impressive collection of diseases.

Once the wallpaper tax was abolished in the 19th Century, wallpaper became even more dangerous. As the price dropped, so more homes suddenly discovered the delights of the most fashionable wallpapers. The most fashionable papers were green, and the green that was most desired was created using arsenic. In damp houses (i.e. most of them) this created a faint garlic odour that was the telltale sign of arsenic in the atmosphere. Arsenic poisoning probably accounted for countless cases of blindness, acute diabetes, neurological disorders and deaths.

It’s taken a lot of effort to reach a point where wallpaper can be enjoyed by everyone, inexpensively, and without harm to health. So take another look at those walls, and appreciate the true wonder of your new wallpaper.

Discount Wallpaper