A Mystery Fragment!
In working on the bathroom, I found this fragment between some studs.
The room was originally, I think, a servant’s bedroom. Is this the original paper to the room?
Tantalizing!
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Would a servant’s room have wallpaper? Seems kinda fancy for a servant’s room. Could it be from one of the later remodelings?
Good point, mlaiuupa.
Or… the owners never went to the servants’ rooms so a servant took leftover scraps and decorated the space on the sly? 😉
Even the most humble Frontier houses had wallpaper, it would be applied over planks when they couldn’t afford or didn’t have access to plaster. It really wasn’t a status symbol, since it was all machine made by this era. There were different grades- the ones with metallic inks and lots of colors would have been more expensive.
Our house had wallpaper applied to planks. It was sort of pitiful. But I’m sure it helped stop the drafts
In 1940, my 15-year-old mom, siblings, parents and great grandmother lived in a three room house in the Texas Panhandle. No electricity, just a cold water pump for the kitchen sink, and a room for a bathtub. Outhouse was out back. The place was old even then.
The outer walls had huge gaps between the boards. Grandma papered the entire place with newspapers again and again, until the drafts finally stopped. At that point, she used the cheapest wallpaper she could find to give the walls a somewhat nicer finish. Mom said it looked pretty good for cheap wallpaper.
Then it burned down. Grandad got Great Grandmother out; they lost everything else but a couple pieces of Mom’s childhood china tea set.
But Mom can still describe that wallpaper.
Depending on which wall you found it in, could it be from a remodel of the room/area on the other side?
Hi, Nona! The fragment was found inside the east wall, which is an exterior wall.
Fascinating. I wonder if Bo can identify the pattern.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever seen the census for 1900?
I know that Mr. Cross tragically died shortly after the house
was completed and a granddaughter was living with Mrs.
Cross, but I wonder if there were servants and/or boarders
living there as well. That must have been such a shock and
financially scary for Mrs Cross to lose her husband so suddenly.
Could it be plaster with stencil painted on it?
Could be – the way it’s cracking doesn’t quite look like paper to me in the picture. Either a stencil or a rubber pattern roller. The latter were immensely popular in 1920s through 50s Europe and I know they were sometimes used in the US. Blogger Daniel Kanter had roller patterns all over his NY house when he bought it.
I think shooting the walls with a sprayer and then running a pattern roller over them was still cheaper than hanging even the cheapest of wallpapers. I definitely know walls were spray painted in the 50s round here, I’ve removed original light switch covers to find the whole switch and back box covered with overspray. The sprayers were simple metal pump sprayers, like garden sprayers.
It’s paper, Bajo.
So many questions and wonderful ideas. Curious. 🙂
I’ve been in a few of grand old houses with servants quarters which were never redecorated or restored, and hence retained their original finishes. They were always papered, albeit in cheaper patterns than the main rooms.