Number Five

Dear Louis Poisson,

Those wallpaper swatches are mesmerizing. If you actually want to see a Cole & Son design firsthand, I suggest you pay a trip to Brighton’s Sejuice café (or the space that Sejuice used to occupy?). Do not waste your hard earned money on the mediocre coffee, but instead visit the ladies washroom! It’s completely plastered in flamingos! I certainly remember in that context, marveling at the wallpaper for a good five minutes and then waxing lyrical about it to a friend. Hands down – one of the best toilet experiences that I have ever had!

I guess that the nature of wallpaper has always been a bit of a design conundrum. Its well-established history within interior design has ultimately meant that the purpose of wallpaper has always been prone to modification in the hands of each designer. To turn our attention to the present day, in the case of ‘the flamingos’ by Cole & Son, a contemporary wallpaper, we can assume that when consumed, it is intended to feature as a striking and central design feature within a room. Less exciting examples of wallpaper (plain, white and flat),that you might see for sale in your average D.I.Y. store, are usually used as subtle and unobtrusive backdrops.

If we delve into the history of wallpaper however, things appear to be a little complicated. I have to admit that whilst I am no specialist in the area of wallpaper design (or even just in design…yet!), during my first term of the MA, I was treated to a really interesting one-off class about nineteenth century French wallpaper.

You questioned whether or not wallpaper could perform as something completely different to its widely accepted function of ‘blending in’ and ‘bringing out’ the detail of other things, harmoniously. In the case of the nineteenth century French wallpaper manufacturer, Dufour, wallpaper was not just a simple decorative addition to an interior that could match surrounding furnishings. Feast your eyes on this badboy.

Courtesy of V&A Collection

Courtesy  of V&A Collection

Manufactured by Dufour in 1814, these thirty lengths of wallpaper form a continuous panorama of the chief monuments of Paris, arranged along one of the banks of the Seine. Pretty impressive, right? Produced by a colour woodblock print technique, it is highly likely that this wallpaper would have served a similar purpose to today’s Cole & Son wallpapers. Aside from its eye-watering levels of intricacy and aesthetically pleasing nature however, the sample also establishes that to have acquired and used this wallpaper, ultimately meant that the user had to have had a large enough (height and width of each length of paper measures 240cm x 49.5cm) room for the entire sample to fit.

In simpler terms, rather than the size of a room determining the amount of wallpaper required, Dufour’s 'Les Monuments de Paris' determined the size of room that it could be consumed within. Authority is not in the user’s hands, but is instead within the designed object. I don’t know about you but personally, I find that somewhat mind-blowing!

Now, from 1800s French wallpaper to more contemporary wallpaper.

A new solution to blank and boring walls: concrete wallpapers! (Available at ConcreteWall).

Kind regards and sincere apologies for the delayed response,

Rei Kawakubo. 

number four-cum-one

Dear Kelly Cutrone,

Well that was a poor effort on my part wasn't it? This is the thing, one needs stamina to write these days. I've been reading 'The Descent of Language' by R. Mengham (yeah, shut up, it's bloody good, I don't care), and there's an interesting part about the stigma associated with writing in traditional Western philosophy against the pedestal of speech (Plato, Aristotle, Saussure). Writing was seen as only a system of symbols for speech, and only good for recollection rather than memory, stripping language from its ability to be immediately questioned, challenged, ruminated as it was seen to be through speech. Just a theory, and cognitively balls, but imagine if, in terms of brain use, by reverting to language through typing or even just in terms of short sentences (status updates, etc), we were stripping language and our relationship with it further? (Many would say we are I'm sure, but what new results could be had that take language forward and rearrange connections in the brain...? In a good way...) Well, what I do know, which I hate and fear, is that it is sometimes a struggle for me not to speak in note form, or even think in bullet point form. How inelegant and unpoetic is that?! Anyway, enough of that. I just really like the ancient reach of the topic.

But, to art and design. I have been thinking since my MA interview about what kinds of objects I could hone in on for specialist interest, having always programmed myself towards essaying in terms of themes/trajectories rather than object domains. I know that I am interested in spaces (as you know), and dimensions, and how spaces feel/seem different according to different internal/external variations. I've been thinking about this in terms of interior design, and realised that when I look through the most excellent magazine World of Interiors, I really get a buzz when I see spaces that have used elements of mural design or trompe l'oeil. There doesn't seem to be much literature on it, so I think I might investigate that route. There's a really crazy contemporary trompe l'oeil artist called Graham Rust who's done some very large projects:

Photography by Kevin Smith

There have also been some interesting cases of topographical murals, such as those in La Galeriedes Cerfs at Fontainebleau:

Copyright: Musée et Domaine nationaux du Chateau de Fontainebleau - RMN

Every (oil on plaster) panel (by Louis Poisson c. 1600) is of a different Royal estate belonging to Henry IV - there was more on this in an issue of World of Interiors, will look this up.

Also, I've discovered the wonder of wallpapers by Cole & Son. I've picked out an enormous amount, but it's worth it, a real feast for the eyes, wallpaper-gasm...Look at these babies: (All Copyright: 2010 Cole & Son (Wallpapers) Ltd. All rights reserved.)

(All Copyright: 2010 Cole & Son (Wallpapers) Ltd. All rights reserved)

Sorry about that! Good though eh? Not really a letter-writing norm, but you could see them as a load of swatches! Is wallpaper meant to be interior decoration that blends in and brings out the detail of other things harmoniously, or does it become or function as something different when, like many of these, it catches the eye and demands attention? Especially as part of a domestic interior, these are designs to be studied and pored over.

I shall leave things there for now, as I'd like to know what you think, and what your latest interests have been.

Yours,

Louis Poisson.