Tags
Architecture, Art Nouveau, Design, Dordrecht, Flowers, Interior Design, Jugendstil, Period Decorating, Restoration, Wallcoverings, Wallpaper
Oranjelaan around 1920
In december 2012 I wrote about our ‘Find of the year’, our new 1913 Art Nouveau family home. Two weeks ago we finally got the keys and now we are very busy with all the things one has to do when buying an old house: selecting a new kitchen, picking a new bathroom, painting doors, having the roof checked by a professional roofer, ordering solar panels, taking down dirty wallpaper, repairing the walls, removing dirty carpet, getting the lead pipes replaced and a new heating system installed etc. etc. etc…
It was surprising to find that there were up to 6 layers of wallpaper in some of the rooms, including the original wallpapers from 1913! Realising these old wallpapers are a rather exceptional discovery, I contact a lady from the local preservation office who came rushing over the same night. Together we walked through every room and collected samples of all wallpapers, except for the one with the blue flowers in the living room which we will not be able to remove without destroying…
Now remember, this is 100 years of wallpaper design stacked, and only the oldest ones are interesting to me! Carefully I removed the 5 ‘newer’ layers in order to be able to see the oldest layer… and this is what I found so far:
The wallpaper with the blue flowers is definitely my favorite!
For those who are interested, I have been collecting some wallpaper links:
Bricks & Brass
Sammlung Deutsches Tapetenmuseum
Fabrics and Wallpaper in Brussels Houses
Muurbloempjes, Behangsnippers in Dordrecht
More than 6.000 wallpaper designs digitized
Musée du Papier Peint la Commanderie
Original Art Nouveau Wallpaper
Trustworth Wallpaper
V&A Museum Wallpaper
Wallpaper at the Cooperhewitt Organisation
Whitworth Art Gallery Wallpaper
About Art Nouveau 
Thanks for another interesting post on art nouveau. Your collections are beautiful!
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Yes the blue paper is beautiful. How did you end up with all of this ? Is there any remaining in your home ? Thks
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Well, we are still working on the renovation of the house. It is a large project. We have not yet decided what we are going to do with the wallpaper, but there are basically 2 options: destroy it, or just leave it as it is. So I guess we are going to leave it and work around it. It will somehow have to be incorporated into the final result!
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Oh, is there so much work to do ? (Well i understand, i have started my bedroom painting two months ago and have not terminated yet…).
You should let a piece of the painted paper somewhere and put a frame surrounding it 😉 – i imagine that after one century left they may seem dirty and not washable.
I have read at the beginning of your post on the painted papers that you live in an art nouveau house ?!? Have you posted photos on it ? Sorry i have not yet read all your blog, it is si interesting that i sobber it little by little ;-).
Thks for your reply, i let you, i am coming back to my own painting work (since my house was built in the 60′ there was not old treasures to fin ;-(
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We have bought the house in december 2012, and we got the keys 29 april 2013. Since then we have been working in the house to get it back into it’s original glory as nobody took care of it for 40 years and it was basically a disaster! I posted some pictures in a previous post https://aboutartnouveau.wordpress.com/2012/12/31/find-of-the-year/ We hope to be able to move there by the end of december 2013, but that might be too optimistic. We’ll see 🙂
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