Loading
Art Nouveau wallpaper with tulips
Unknown1900/1905
Nordiska Museet
Stockholm, Sweden
Machine-printed wallpaper, Norrköpings Tapetfabrik.
Show lessRead more
Details
- Title: Art Nouveau wallpaper with tulips
- Creator: Unknown
- Date Created: 1900/1905
- Location Created: Norrköping
- Physical Dimensions: w50 x h78 cm
- More Information: Art Nouveau wallpaper with large tulips in various shades of pink with dark green stems against light green background. Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil, was the new style created around 1900 as a criticism of dark interiors in older historic styles and material imitation. Art Nouveau quickly came to feature in machine-printed wallpaper and was sold in all price ranges. The criticism of the historical styles, when it came to wallpaper, focused on the dark colour scheme, the three-dimensional patterns and material imitations. Different parts of houses could be decorated with wallpapers that looked like ashlar, wood panelling, gilt leather, moiré, brocade, Oriental kelim – all materials considerably more expensive than paper. William Morris in England demanded authenticity of materials. Morris, who launched hand-printed wallpaper patterns with new plant designs as early as 1862, said that wallpaper should be patterned paper, nothing more. Morris became the leader of a new aesthetic promoted by the Arts & Crafts movement. His wallpaper patterns became famous in Sweden in the 1890s. The Art Nouveau wallpapers that swept through Sweden in the last years of the 19th century ideally featured organic growth. Lilies, irises, anemones, poppies and other flowers were depicted in a surface pattern (with no shadow drawing) with long winding stems. The long drawn-out curves often gave the wallpaper huge patterns; the largest flower on this selected wallpaper is 46 cm high. Green, the colour of growth, became the typical Art Nouveau colour. Borders, often wide, were also popular. This tulip pattern in Nordiska museet's collections comes from a wallpaper factory in Norrköping which printed both simple and sophisticated floral patterns. The green colour is typical, as are the large-scale meandering flowers, and the fact that all the stages of a flower's life are represented in the wallpaper: the bud, the open flower and the wilting flower with drooping petals. The Norrköping wallpaper factory, like many other Swedish wallpaper factories, bought the pattern from Germany. They then printed and sold it themselves. Art Nouveau survived in a slightly altered form until around the time of the First World War. Although Art Nouveau wallpaper spread rapidly across Sweden, old wallpaper in older styles remained and textile-imitating wallpaper remained the most common style in bourgeois homes until the 1920s.
- Type: Wallpaper
- Rights: Photo: Mats Landin, © Nordiska museet
- External Link: http://www.digitaltmuseum.se/things/tapetprov/S-NM/NM.0233033
Get the app
Explore museums and play with Art Transfer, Pocket Galleries, Art Selfie, and more
