Displaying items by tag: wallpaper

Thanks in part to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Historic New England announces the completion of a digitization project that makes its extensive wallpaper collection more accessible.

For the past two years, Historic New England has been cataloguing and digitizing its wallpaper collection. Now, more than 6,000 samples have been electronically catalogued and are available at WallpaperHistory.org. The collection includes rolled, flat, oversize, and three-dimensional materials, which each require unique handling and digitization methods.

In Blair’s defence, his Victorian guru was so prolific in so many fields, it’s near-impossible to keep track of all he did. Morris is perhaps best known nowadays for his densely-patterned, curly-leaf wallpaper, so popular in middle class homes in the Seventies.

Boscobel House & Gardens in Garrison, New York has started renovating its iconic Federal style mansion. The project, which began with sweeping historical upgrades to the house’s entry hall, signals long-term future changes for the estate.

Boscobel was built around 1808 in Westchester County by States and Elizabeth Dyckman. The house was saved from demolition, dismantled and moved to its present site in Putnam County in the late 1950s. In 1961, Lila Acheson Wallace and her husband, DeWitt, the founders of “Reader's Digest,” restored Boscobel and opened the estate to the public. In 1977, Berry B. Tracy, then a curator with the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, helmed a complete decorative renovation of Boscobel. Boscobel has long been considered one of America’s finest historic homes of the Federal Period.

The renovation to Boscobel’s grand entry hall will include outfitting the walls with new period-appropriate wallpaper, updating the floor with a new historic floorcovering, and re-painting the woodwork trim. Decisions regarding the wallpaper, floorcovering, and paint were based on extensive research performed by Boscobel’s Curator and Collection Manager, Judith Pavelock.

Boscobel’s project for the grand entry hall is slated to be completed this spring.