Project Outline

Equipment

Guiding questions

Background Info

1. Humans covering walls with images and text is certainly nothing new. Applying patterns and motifs for the walls in which we dwell and occupy is an act that can be traced back to some of humanity’s earliest forms of design. The content, application, understanding, and tradition of these markings has evolved alongside the society and technology where they are found.

   When you start digging it is interesting to notice how the architecture and societal customs of any specific groups has impacted development of wallpaper over time.

   It is even more interesting (to us) how readily available information is for some groups (French, English, German, Japanese), and how little there is about others (Pasifika, Indian, South American). The word ‘wallpaper’ may be part of the issue if we take it only to mean rolls of printed paper that are hung on walls ... and then taken down again when that pattern is ‘out of fashion’. However, when you push past that definition, all cultures have some form of pattern or motif that is used within the home and public spaces that are significant.

   

   The Kai Art Centre in Tallinn reveals layers of history. Photo: Harriet Thorpe

2. It’s important to be conscious that your understanding of wallpaper today (literally right now as you read this) has been informed and influenced by your interactions with it, including our memories and lived experiences. For example, did you wonder if this project would be about designing a product that would be used digitally such as a phone or laptop wallpaper? If so, this indicates your possible age and experience with digital technologies. Are you aware that the design of digital wallpaper is quite a big business? Or perhaps the word wallpaper makes you think of the houses of your parents, grandparents or wider relatives?

   It’s hard to believe that anyone growing up in Aotearoa over the age of 30 hasn’t got a memory of some wild vintage wallpaper from a member of the whanau or a childhood friend’s place.

   

   A yet to be restored villa in Auckland's Herne Bay

3. We challenge you to broaden your mind and your search to include products outside of your personal time, space and culture.

   This means consciously thinking outside this era, the buildings and architecture you live and dwell, and about different cultures from within Aotearoa but also across the globe.

   A few basic starting points might include; tapa cloth, tuku tuku panels, traditional wall paintings and murals from around the world, tiled works such as mosaic and byobu dividers. The links we have provided are purely a starting point for your own journey. It is pretty surface-level stuff; it is our hope that you use it as a springboard to gather rich and meaningful information for this project.

   

   Isabel Hodgkins 1st prize winning design - from 1885

History


Blogs and articles:
The suprising story of wallpaper (BBC article)

Why wallpaper is making a stylish comeback (blog) 

A very brief history of wallpaper (blog)

A brief history of wallpaper (article with some great links)

Manufacture and Production
















Note: this video is loooong - but it's interesting ... 

Design, Designers, and Companies

Blogs, articles, and websites:

Fornasetti Collection (article in Wallpaper Magazine)

Colour and confinement (short feature)

A history of wallpaper's deception (article) 

William Morris and wallpaper design (article)

Not your mother's wallpaper (company profile)

12 classic wallpaper design (article)

Samsung Denzeen wallpaper competition (blog about the competition)

Flavor Paper (interesting company)

Wes Anderson wallpaper (OMG)

Specific to Aotearoa: context and design models

Blogs and articles:

Our Treasures: Historic wallpaper samples in Whangārei Museum archives tell of decorating tastes from the past (NZ Herald article)

Pacific Dreaming (NZ National Geographic - buckle up people)


Johnson Witehira:

Whakapapa walls (Design Assembly article)

Marae into everyday spaces (article)


Lisa Reihana:

Why I made Captain Cook lose his breeches: Lisa Reihana on her colonial video epic (article in The Guardian)

Sweeping, troubling murals of Pacific Islands history at SF’s de Young Museum (article)

Further (and quite intense) Readings

For the Harry Hardout's:

The conservation of heritage wallpaper (Winston Churchill Fellowship report)

More than a koru (article in Idealog)

Listings in the National Library of New Zealand (literally just listings) 

Adolf Loos' 'Ornament and Crime' (academic article).

WARNING: this article presents views that seem at odd with our worldviews today. However, it presents an important perspective and thus is still widely used in tertairy study. Please read it with that understanding

Let's do something!

1. 1

   What am I doing?

   You need to get your head in the game! You do this by exploring and forming an understanding of the context of wallpaper design. This means re-reading the information provided in this lesson, including the design brief. Use the questions as a starting point to help guide your initial research and investigation. You will need to write your own questions inspired by your research findings as you go.

2. 2

   What's worth remembering?

   Note down all the key points you come across while doing your research. There is no right ‘key point’. The things you are writing down will be where you do more research, so they need to be both interesting and relevant to you. Sometimes what you write down IS a question that comes in response to the information you are investigating.

   You can not separate design outcomes from the society and time in which they were created. Do you feel you understand enough about the development of wallpaper design through history to be able to comment on what it’s like today? How/why is it different to design wallpaper now than, say, in 1926 Germany? And do you understand how place and culture affect the design of wallpaper? How does the design of spaces affect how wallpaper is used?

   If you haven’t dug into peoples, places and spaces (especially outside of your own culture and geography) - you aren’t ready for the next step so keep DIGGING.

3. 3

   Developing an initial position

   So, you’ve done some digging, learnt a few things and now have a basic understanding of context - we hope. From here you need to establish what you found the most interesting about that information. You need to clarify your position (this may change as you learn more and develop your ideas) within the world of wallpaper design.

   Basically, what are you interested in pursuing that will inform your practice?

   Create a simple bullet point list that brings together the most important bits of information you found.

   
   Demelza’s example:

   • Issues around traditional wallpaper and sustainability 
   • The tension between pattern, ornament and modernism
   • The loss of entire visual languages when people started pulling down paper in favour of ‘clean’ white walls
   • The tension around visual diversity and those creating the outcomes (who is represented visually and who is not/who is represented in the industry and who is not)
   • Modern wallpaper design and a feeling of soulnessless
   • Wallpaper can have many forms/interpretations

Images

1. 

   Fornasetti

2. 

   Johnson Witehira

3. 

   Lisa Reihana

4. 

   Brutalist architectural print

5. 

   1960's Print

6. 

   Bauhaus inspired

7. 

   Wes Anderson inspired