#decorated papers

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday

English designer Marthe Armitage (b. 1930) made a successful career of designing and manufacturing decorative wallpaper originally from handmade linocuts. Her designs have been featured in exhibitions, films, and documentaries. After studying at the Chelsea School of Art, Armitage began designing and hand printing linocut wallpaper designs in the 1950s. Her techniques moved to lithography, offset, and finally after 2018 to digital processes. The images shown her, including three original linocuts, are from her article "Patterns from Lino" in Matrix 11, Winter 1991, pp. 81-89, in which Armitage discusses her practice, evolutions in her methods, and her homage to William Morris. Today she is represented by the wallpaper design company Hamilton Weston. Armitage is a member and a former Master of the venerable Art Workers' Guild, which had its origins in the late 19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement.

These images of Marthe Armitage designs were snagged randomly from the Interwebs.

Matrix, printed at John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England, is a donation from our late friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts on decorative papers.

View more Decorative Sunday posts.

[turnbullrarebooks]

In 2014, Ruth Lightbourne, then Curator Rare Books and Fine Printing, posted to Tumblr a series of interesting decorated pastedowns and endpapers.

Two further examples were recently added when the Alexander Turnbull Library acquired a mixed set of volumes of Der Naturforscher, a natural science journal published in Halle, Germany, from 1774 to 1804. The specific volumes purchased relate to Captain Cook’s voyages to the Pacific region.

Present in two of the volumes were these rather fine examples of German decorated pastedowns and endpapers, which are contemporary with the dates of publication in both volumes (1774 and 1776) and went unrecorded in the bookseller’s catalogue. 

A nice discovery when the volumes were unpacked!

Five volumes of Der Naturforscher, Alexander Turnbull Library, R407674-R407678

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday

Graphic designer and decorative-paper collector Hans Schmoller's article "An Italian Paperchase," published in Matrix 5, Winter 1985, pp. 1-14, celebrates the decorated papers of three Italian women, Flavia Farina Cini, Eleonora dei Conti Gallo, and Pia Vitali.

The patterns shown here were made from woodblocks with a paste made chiefly from starch and dextrin, colored with a wide variety of pigments. The first image is the emblem of the workshop, Laboratorio Italiano Manifattura Artistica (L. I. M. A.), a play on the village where it is located, Lima, Italy. It is also known as Laboratorio Marcelliano after nearby San Marcello. This is the workshop where Flavia Farina Cini spent her career.

Hans Schmoller (1916-1985) was the highly influential head of typography and design at Penguin Books for almost 30 years (1949-1976). He and his wife Tanya (1918-2016), who was the personal assistant to Allen Lane, the co-founder of Penguin Books, were both avid collectors of decorated papers from around the world. Hans Schmoller was able to collect enough original samples of work by Farina Cini and Conti Gallo to include in the 718 copies of Matrix 5, printed at John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England.

The work of Pia Vitali could only be shown in a b&w photograph, along with other photographs of work by Farina Cini and and Conti Gallo. Our copy is another donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts on decorative papers.

View more Decorative Sunday posts.

[uwmspeccoll]

Decorative Sunday

These samples of Chinese decorated paper are inserted into the article "Chinese Decorated Paper" by the Uruguayan-British decorative-paper collector and graphic art historian Tanya Schmoller (1918-2016) in Matrix 8, Winter 1988, pp. 94-98. These samples were imported to England in the 1930s. The symbols and patterns on the papers are traditional and denote good fortune: a butterfly meaning companionship or a good marriage; a bee diligence; a fish plenty; the wheel, the crane, and the bat long life; and circle with squares at their centers, money. Much of the article conjectures about the locations and methods of manufacture, but in the end, Schmoller concedes that the "papers are showy with little real worth and cheaply splendid."

Tanya Schmoller was the personal assistant to Penguin Books co-founder Allen Lane and was married to Penguin's director of typography and design Hans Schmoller. In 1987, the couple, along with Bird & Bull Press owner and printer Henry Morris, published the book Chinese Decorated Papers, which we blogged about almost four years ago. That book and Matrix, printed at John and Rosalind Randle’s Whittington Press in Risbury, Herefordshire, England, are donation from our friend Jerry Buff.

View more posts on decorative papers.

View more Decorative Sunday posts.

[hdslibrary]

In the Papers

Fall is finally here in New England! Please enjoy some beautiful decorated papers found in bindings in our collection. Of the so-called Dutch gilt variety, we think these have a nice, autumnal vibe.

[conservethis]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_laLzd9URw)

[turnbullrarebooks]

Since it is nearly Christmas, all things glittery seem appropriate. Gilt endpapers (and one paste paper) used in the book binding process, either as endpapers, or as a cover.

There's more about these on the National Library blog.