Where do our patterns come from?

Recreating period wallpaper can be a fascinating journey through museums, libraries and historic buildings. Sometimes a small scrap or a faded sample is the only clue to what the wall covering originally looked like. Reading the clues and bringing a wallpaper pattern back to life requires a complete knowledge of historic ornament, an eye for color and painstaking attention to detail, but the results can be stunning. Read more…

A digital edition of Christopher Dresser's Studies in Design (1876) is available at the Smithsonian Libraries. Several of the patterns in our Modern Ornamentation collection are adapted from plates in this publication.

The latest publication about Dresser is a comprehensive review of his remarkable career as an industrial designer. Written by the noted scholar Harry Lyons, Christopher Dresser: The People's Designer - 1834-1904 includes an illustrated "Grammar of Dresser Ornament" compiled by Wayne Mason, partner in Mason & Wolf.

Coinciding with the centenary of Dresser's death, The Shock of the Old: Christopher Dresser was the first major exhibition to focus on his design studio. The exhibition, an exhaustive examination of all aspects of his work and the theory behind it, was a joint effort of the Cooper-Hewitt and Victoria & Albert museums.

These periodicals explore historic styles, period design, vintage architecture, and past culture.

:: Old House Interiors ::
:: Old House Journal ::
:: Victorian Homes ::
:: Period Homes ::
:: Nineteenth Century ::
:: American Bungalow ::
:: Arts and Crafts Homes ::

Mason and Wolf Wallpaper :: PO Box 6224 :: Freehold, NJ 07728
phone 732-866-0451 :: fax 732-866-4264 :: info@mason-wolf.com
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