04/11/2008 by conrad.

We’re in the New Millenium Twenty-five years ago, most wallpapers were “washable,” meaning that the ink would not run if you wet it lightly. Then came vinyl coated, vinyl acrylic, solid sheet vinyl, laminated vinyl, etc. Most wallcoverings are labeled “non-washable,” “washable” or “scrubbable.” If your paper wasn’t labeled, but you have a small piece, take it to a wallpaper dealer and ask them what they would recommend. Or test an inconspicuous area (as behind furniture) by wiping it with a damp cloth; if the wallpaper does not change in color or appearance, it probably can be safely cleaned as a washable wallpaper. Always test any cleaning method in an inconspicuous spot before trying in on a wall open to view.

Vacuum off dust frequently. Don’t let paper get too dirty before cleaning it. Remove dust periodically by brushing gently downward from the ceiling with a vacuum cleaner wall brush, which does the best job, or a long handled soft brush, a clean cloth tied around broom or mop. Remember to change the cloth when it gets soiled to prevent streaks. If cobwebs are present lift them up with the brush because they may cause streaks when brushed down. If your wallcovering is flocked, use only the vacuum dusting brush attachment to clean as it prevents matting or shedding. If the ceiling is papered, dust it first.

Washable Papers

“Washable” papers usually have a plastic coating. Clean with a damp cloth or sponge; use water sparingly and do not get them wet.

• Make a sudsy solution of a mild white detergent (hand dish washing liquid) in cool water in one bucket, and cool rinse water in a second bucket.
• First clean the ceiling, whether papered or painted.
• Then clean the walls from the bottom up, very gently wiping overlapping areas in circular motion, first with a damp sudsy sponge, then with a damp rinsing sponge.
• Pat gently with a clean soft cloth or bath towel to remove any surface moisture.
• If any area has to be re-washed to remove soil, let it dry completely before washing again.
• Some foam cleaners may be used, but only if directions on their label say they can.

“Scrubbable” Wallcoverings

Wallcoverings labeled “scrubbable” are vinyl or vinyl-impregnated paper. They can be scrubbed with a foam cleanser or all-purpose detergent, using a sponge or soft cloth, and rinsed with clean sponge or cloth. Do not use any abrasive liquid cleaners nor any scouring powders nor any other abrasives, as these could scratch the vinyl finish. These wallcoverings are more practical for rooms that get lots of use. Foam cleaners are normally used as follows

1. Spray a four-foot square area, holding the can about 8 inches from surface.
2. Wipe off foam and soil with a clean damp sponge.
3. Wipe area with a rinsing sponge, and gently pat dry with clean towel.

Fabric and Textile Wallcoverings

Some are vinyl-coated and easy to wash. Others, like burlap or grass cloth, are very hard to clean when stained. You might try wiping lightly with a sponge dampened in suds and water; testing first in an inconspicuous spot to be sure the water won’t stain the covering. Best method is to follow directions provided by the manufacturer of that covering, or ask a dealer for a cleaner recommended for that wallcovering.

We recommend you dust occasionally with a clean cloth or vacuum to remove loose dirt. If you can wash spots and stains use a sponge or soft bristle brush soaked in a mild detergent or soap solution. Rinse well. If you really have a trouble spot, add two or three tablespoons of bleach. Use the non-chlorine type for delicate fabrics. Rinse with plenty of clear water and dry with an absorbent towel to prevent streaking.

Non-washable Papers

Buy commercial wallpaper cleaner, (a putty like material). Rub it over the surface, following directions on the product exactly. Always test first a on place usually not seen, such as behind furniture, to see how it affects paper and that it does not streak. Vacuum or brush off any bits of cleaner that have clung to the wall.

Spots and Stains

Finger Marks, Smudges, and Pencil Marks: Rub gently with art gum or commercial wallpaper cleaner. On washable paper, wipe with damp sponge, or sudsy sponge and then damp sponge if needed to remove mark.

Grease Spots: Hold a clean white blotter or several white paper towels over the spot and press with a warm iron until the grease is absorbed by towels. If grease still remains, apply a paste spot remover and brush it off after it dries to a powder. If washable paper you may be able to wipe off with a sudsy sponge, followed by damp sponge.

Crayon: (You have to remove both wax/grease and color.) If thick amount left, scrape off excess with table knife. Use a warm iron and white paper towel method as under “grease spots.” For non-washable papers, try paste spot remover as under “grease spots,” or wipe gently with a cloth moistened with denatured alcohol or spot remover; these are flammable and the vapors are toxic, so be sure there is no flame, spark, or pilot light in area and have plenty of ventilation. Do not clean walls by this method! Use only on small spots. For washable papers, use sudsy sponge after lifting grease. Do not smear the residue. Make certain you only buy washable crayons for children, however do not let them write on walls!

This article has been contributed in part by Michigan State University Extension.

Concept coverings are the Uk’s leading supplier of digitally printed wallpapers and canvas prints

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03/07/2008 by conrad.

Anaglypta is a white, thicker relief paper with an embossed pattern. It is then painted over with either emulsion or resin based paint. It is an ideal covering for a poor surface as it disguises many lumps and bumps. The decoration can be changed with extra coats of paint.

Flock wallpaper has a fine pile synthetic or natural embossed surface, glued to backing paper. It often gives a velvet texture and is rich in colour. It is one of the more expensive wallpapers. It is a difficult paper to hang as any paste touching the surface will ruin the pile. If it becomes stained, it can be carefully sponged, otherwise it can be gently brushed to remove surface dust.

Foil wallpaper has a metallized plastic film on a paper backing. They are suitable for darker areas because the shiny surface helps to reflect light. It is a hardwearing wallpaper available in fine textures and many colours and can be wiped clean. However it is a fine paper which is unsuitable for poor wall surfaces as the uneven areas will show through. As the paper has a metallized coat it can conduct electricity so should not be tucked behind switch / plug covers when hanging. When using foil wallpaper, paste the wall instead of the back of the paper and take care not to splash paste on the front of the paper.

Lincrustas were very popular in the past. It was particularly popular on staircases due to its durable, easy to clean surface. The raised pattern is a solid film of linseed oil and filers fused onto a backing paper.

Lining paper is a plain paper which can be used before wallpaper on poor or painted surfaces. Papering a ceiling is much hard than papering walls, but it is often the best way to cover cracks. It is available in different thicknesses.

Novamura is made from foamed polyethylene. It is available in a wide range of patterns and colours. It is an easy surface to hang and is very light to manoeuvre as there is no paper content. The surface is warm to the touch and often resembles fabric. Due to the foam polyethylene surface it can be knocked and damaged in a busy area. It is particularly suitable for bathrooms and kitchens, where it can ease condensation.

Polystyrene sheeting is used to line walls before papering. It makes the wall warm to touch, reduces condensation but dents easily if marked by furniture. It is therefore unsuitable for busy areas where damage is a possibility through everyday heavy use and possible knocking.

Printed wallpaper is often machine printed in numerous designs and colours and is reasonably priced. Hand printed wallpaper is available but is obviously more costly. These papers are not as hard wearing as the machine printed variety. Their colours are not as fast and can tear when wet. They can be lightly wiped if dirty but cannot be washed, so are unsuitable for busy areas. Delicate patterns are also more difficult to match. If they are hand made designs the accuracy of the pattern is not as reliable as the machine printed papers. Printed papers are not particularly suitable for areas where there is a build up of steam or condensation.

Supaglypta is a stronger version of Anaglypta. Cotton fibres are used in place of wood pulp, which allows a deeper embossed pattern. It is then painted over.

Vinyl wallpaper has the design printed on a layer of vinyl. It has a fine paper backing and gives an easy to wipe surface. Expanded vinyl has a texture similar to a heavy embossed paper, but require less paste for hanging. It is a very durable surface, which can even be lightly scrubbed, making it particularly suitable for kitchens and bathrooms.

Washable wallpaper is ordinary wallpaper which is either coated with a thin glaze of polyvinyl acetate -PVA or is printed with water resistant inks. It gives an easy to wipe surface and is particularly suitable for kitchens and bathrooms.

Woodchip paper is an inexpensive way of covering walls. It is a plain paper with a textured oatmeal surface, made by impregnating the pulp with sawdust and woodchip during its manufacture. It then needs to be painted and can be covered in a variety of coloured emulsions.

Cellulose paste is the best choice for light wallpapers as it does not stain.

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21/03/2008 by conrad.

William Morris was born on March 24, 1834 at Elm House, Walthamstow. His father died in 1847 and soon afterwards the family moved to Water House, Walthamstow, now the home of the William Morris Gallery. Morris was sent to school at Marlborough in 1848 and afterwards went to Exeter College, Oxford, to study Theology where he met Edward Burne-Jones who became his lifelong friend.

It was on a trip to France where Morris and Burne-Jones decided not to take the Holy Orders but to dedicate their lives to art. Morris left college in 1856 and went to work for an architect G.E Street where he met Philip Webb. Burne-Jones moved to London and studied painting under the guidance of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Morris soon abandoned architecture and began to study painting under Rossetti’s guidance. He found his talents were more suited to decorative arts than painting and experimented with stained glass, ceramics, furniture, book design, wall papers and textiles.

The Firm
In 1859 Morris married Jane Burden and a year later they moved into Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent, a house designed for Morris by architect Philip Webb. Morris and a group of friends (Rossetti, Webb, etc) started to design and produce their own furnishings for the house. This led to the formation in 1861 of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

The ‘firm’ as it became known, set up in rented premises in Red Lion Square and soon prospered. Most of the early work was commissions from Gothic Revival architects for supplying them with stained glass and furnishings for church buildings.

In 1865 Morris and the firm moved to 26 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. The ground floor was converted into workshops and offices whilst Morris and family lived on the first floor. It was in the scullery where Morris and Thomas Wardle first started experimenting in the revival of vegetable dyeing, starting with embroidery silks.

In 1871 Morris and Rossetti took out a joint tenancy of Kelmscott Manor by the banks of the Thames in Oxfordshire.

Morris & Co
By the middle of the 1870s the Firm had started to run into difficulties. Morris wanted to expand but the other members found it more lucrative developing solo careers also Morris thought the other members profited from his labours so in 1875 Morris decided to dissolve the Firm set up under his own control as Morris & Co.

The new company soon expanded and opened up a shop at 449, Oxford Street. Morris was now turning his attention to woven fabrics and employed a French weaver named Louis Bazin who set up a Jacquard Loom in a new hired workshop at Great Ormond Yard, near Queen Square. After initial problems were overcome the first pattern, the Willow was produced at the end of 1877.

In the autumn of 1878 Morris and family moved to Upper Mall, Hammersmith, now the headquarters of the William Morris Society. Morris renamed the house Kelmscott House which was to become his home until he died. He set up several carpet frames in the coach-house and stables and started to produce handmade carpets which became known as ‘Hammersmith’ carpets.

By 1881 the Queen Square and Great Ormond Yard workshops were becoming cramped and were not able to accommodate the new looms Morris required. He decided to look for premises large enough to manufacture all his goods under one roof. He needed a works near a river suitable for vegetable dying, workshops for cloth printing, textile and carpet weaving, tapestry making and a stained glass workshop. At the time William De Morgan was also looking for premises to manufacture tiles which were sold at Morris’s Oxford Street shop. After rejecting premises in the Cotswolds and at Crayford, Kent, Morris visited the printing works at Merton Abbey and found it exactly suited his needs. William De Morgan also found premises at Merton Abbey and set up close by.

William Morris and the Merton Abbey Works
Morris purchased the site in June 1881. He refused to pull down any of the existing buildings and apart from some minor alterations they remained unchanged until the works closed in 1940.

The site Morris acquired was established in 1752 as a calico printing works and continued to produce calicos until the 19th century. The owners of the works before Morris acquired the lease were the Welch family who produced table-cloth.

Morris adapted the buildings to suit his needs. Next to the entrance to the works was the office and caretaker’s house, next door was the drawing and design room, next door again was the dormitory for the apprentice boys. The two-storey shed to the rear of the High Street buildings contained the dye vats on the ground floor with the stained glass studio on the first floor. Outside this building was a small single-storey weaving shed. On the south bank of the River Wandle was a large shed overlooking the millpond. The ground floor housed the carpet and tapestry looms with the first floor used for fabric printing.

Before Morris could start production a number of alterations had to be undertaken to the buildings. The sheds were strengthened, trenched and puddled to keep out the damp, roofs heightened and re-tiled to fit the looms, floors re-laid and eight (6- foot cubes) dyeing vats were sunk into the original floor of one of the buildings.

Furniture, tiles, embroidery and wallpaper were made elsewhere and not at the Merton Abbey works.

The Processes

Dyeing
Fabric dyeing was undertaken in the dyehouse in large sunken vats; smaller vats were used to dye the silk and wool yarns.

All the dyes Morris used were made from natural substances based on early herbal recipes. These dyes gave a softer tone to the textiles unlike the aniline dyes which gave harsh colours and soon faded.

One of the main reasons Morris decided to move to Merton was that he found the water of the Wandle ideal for dyeing. Many of the fabrics Morris & Co produced used the indigo discharge method. First the cotton cloth is dyed to a shade of blue in one of the large indigo dye vats and then the cloth is printed with a bleaching agent to remove the blue as the patterns requires. Mordants (fixing agents) are then printed on the white parts and the cloth dyed a second time with madder and again with yellow. The three superimposed colours gives green, purple or orange. The access dye was washed away and the colours set by passing the fabrics through soap at nearly boiling point. Afterwards the fabric was laid out in the meadow to dry.

Block printing
Block-printing was undertaken on long padded tables which ran the length of the workshop. The printer would first place the printing block on the dye pad and then press the block onto the cloth. The block was pressed down with the aid of a lead weighted mallet to produce an impression. The dye pads were carried on trolleys which the printer could pull along as he worked along the length of the cloth.

After the first set of impressions was dry a second set of blocks was printed on the cloth and the process repeated. Small pins projected from the blocks so each successive impression could be aligned. The early printing blocks were carved from pearwood which were later replaced by blocks with metal inserts padded with felt to hold the dye.

Stained glass
Morris based his stained glass on the style of the later medieval period which had an emphasis on rich glowing colours in a free-flowing pattern unlike the stained glass of the 17th and 18th centuries which were literally over-precise painted reproductions of medieval stained glass.

The designs for stained glass were first drawn on small sheets which were photographically enlarged to full size as a working drawing known as a ‘cartoon’. Different coloured glass was placed over the cartoon and cut to size. The stained glass artist would then place the individual pieces on his easel and paint on the design. These would next be fired in a kiln located next to the office. After firing the painted glass was leaded together to form the overall picture. The finished design was polished with linseed oil and bran polish to give a high gloss.

Edward Burne-Jones designed most of the stained glass made by Morris & Co but after Morris’s death Dearle became responsible for the artistic direction of the company’s stained glass.

Weaving
The looms Morris & Co used at Merton were the Jacquard looms invented in 1802 by a Frenchman, Joseph Marie Jacquard and became widely used from the 1820s. The advantage of using this type of loom rather than the more traditional draw-looms was that the Jacquard loom used a series of punched cards to lift the warp threads automatically, enabling a more accurate design. The cards could also be stored which meant that patterns could be easily and accurately repeated. The draw-looms were slower and the finished designs less accurate.

Morris spent much of his time in historical research at the Victoria and Albert Museum (then the South Kensington Museum) and was much influenced by the 14th century Italian textiles as well as Middle and Far Eastern patterns. Much of Morris’s designs were based on these early examples.

Carpet weaving
The carpets made at Merton Abbey were hand-knotted or tufted and continued to be known as ‘Hammersmith Rugs’ from their place of origin. This was to distinguish them from the machine-made carpets made by outside contractors.

Morris designed almost all of the firms carpets. He would produce a scale drawing, about one eighth of the full size. The design would then be transferred on to point paper, a squared paper with each square representing a single knot of the carpet. The point paper was hung on the loom and the design copied by the weavers. The loom consisted of two rotating horizontal rollers between which hung the vertical warp threads. Two inch long weft threads were knotted around the warp threads. A each row was finished the weft was beaten down and the process repeated. As the carpet progressed the upper roller unwound enabling a new section to be woven.

Mostly girls were employed in carpet weaving as their smaller hands were better suited to the intricate work. Each weaver would produce around two inches of carpet a day.

Tapestry
The tapestries were woven on high-warp looms. The high-warp or upright loom is a type of loom used in the late medieval period by Flemish tapestry weavers.

Almost all of the tapestry figures were designed by Burne-Jones. He would draw the figures around 15 inches high. The drawings were photographically enlarged full size, mounted, and Morris and Henry Dearle would draw in the foreground and background. The finished drawing was then placed against the loom and traced onto the warp. The tapestries were woven using the plain weaving technique which had a parallel set of warp threads interwoven across the warp with the weft threads. The weft treads were then packed down with a comb to hide the warp threads. Three looms were initially set up with three people working at each loom. Each weaver would sit facing the back of the tapestry with a mirror positioned in front to reflect the design.

Wallpaper

Wallpaper was not made at the Merton Abbey factory but by an outside contractor Jeffrey & Co. The process of printing wallpaper was similar to that of printing textiles. The paper was printed with wooden printing blocks, pressed down with the aid of a foot operated weight and the process repeated.After William Morris died in 1896 the Merton factory continued production under his junior partners Frank and Robert Smith, with John Henry Dearle promoted to Art Director. Burne-Jones died two years later and the majority of the designs for wallpaper, stained glass, textiles and carpets fell to Dearle.

In 1905 Henry Marillier joined the company as managing director and the new company was named Morris & Co. Decorators Ltd. In 1925 the company was renamed as Morris & Co Art Workers Ltd. With the death of Dearle in 1932 the company lost its artistic strength, the quality of work gradually fell and with the depleting market the order books shrank. The company continued to decline until it went into liquidation in May 1940.

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07/02/2008 by conrad.

Linocut is a printmaking technique and is a variant of woodcut. In woodcut printmaking a sheet of linoleum (often mounted on a wooden block) is used for the relief surface. The design is then cut into the linoleum surface with a sharp knife or scalpel, with the raised (uncarved or embossed) areas representing a reversal (inverse or mirror image) of the parts to be printed. The cut areas can then be pulled from the backing. The linoleum sheet is inked using a printing roller (known as a brayer), and then pressed onto paper or fabric. This printing method can be done by hand or by a machine.

As the material being carved has no particular direction to its grain and does not tend to split, it is easier to obtain certain artistic effects than with most woods, although the resultant prints lack the wood character of wood block printing. Linoleum is also much easier to cut than wood, which must be carved away, but the pressure of the printing process degrades the image plate much faster. It is also more difficult to create larger image works due to the material’s fragility.

Linoleum as a floor covering dates to the 1860s, but the linocut method was invented by the artists of Die Brücke in Germany between 1905-13. At first they described their prints as woodcuts, which sounded more respectable.

Colour linocuts can be made by using a different colour block for each colour, as in woodcut. But, as Pablo Picasso demonstrated quite effectively, such prints can also be achieved using a single piece of linoleum in what is called the ‘reductive’ print method. Essentially, after each successive colour is imprinted onto the paper, the artist then cleans the lino plate and goes back into the linoleum, cutting away what will not be imprinted for the subsequently applied colour.

Due to ease of use, linocut is widely used in schools to introduce children to the art of printmaking; similarly, non-professional artists often use linocut rather than woodcut. Wallpaper / Wallcovering where made like this once but are now replaced by Flexo Printers and Surface Printers.

More recently digitally printed wallpaper has been used to replicate this effect as with a computer anything can be achieved. The advantage of a digitally printed wallcovering is that you do not have to engrave a single roller, which dependent on where you go can be in excess of £1000.

You could also have a rotary screen engraver engrave you a rotary screen and this effect can be made to look like Surface or flexo printing.

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19/01/2008 by conrad.

Anaglypta Wallpaper is an embossed paintable wallpaper made from a form of cotton pulp. The word anaglypta is from the Greek language and translates as raised ornamentation. This style of wall covering is more than 100 years old and began to increase in popularity as well as availability outside of Europe in the late 1900’s.

Anaglypta is not a wallpaper that is ready to hang on the wall because it is thick and very heavy. It requires a strong wallpaper adhesive because it is so heavy. The wallpaper is beautiful as it is, but it has good followings in the decorative world because of its ability to hide wall imperfections as well as the ability to paint it in any colour you like.

Anaglypta, like any regular wallpaper or blown vinyl wallpaper, should be hung then allowed to dry for a day or two before you paint it. IYou should always prime the wallpaper first with a primer that is a lighter shade than the final wall colour will be. The main reason for using a tinted primer and not a white primer is that the Anaglypta wallpaper is already white and you run the risk of missing areas. Some paint suppliers now offer a pink when wet and white when dry paint. These are very good for painting Anaglypta wallpaper.

This uniquely textured wallpaper from the Victorian era adds charm and style to any room. Because it is paintable and comes in many beautiful styles, it is perfect for faux finishes, such as mimicking a hammered tin ceiling or creating a mock tin backsplash. These looks are achieved with metallic paints. Anaglypta is also frequently used to imitate stone or as a less expensive way to achieve the feel of intricately carved moldings.

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13/08/2007 by conrad.

History

Wallpaper, using the printmaking technique of woodcut, gained popularity in Renaissance Europe amongst the emerging gentry. The elite of society were accustomed to hanging large tapestries on the walls of their homes, a tradition from the Middle Ages. These tapestries added colour to the room as well as providing an insulating layer between the stone walls and the room, thus retaining heat in the room. However, tapestries were extremely expensive and so only the very rich could afford them. Less well-off members of the elite, unable to buy tapestries due either to prices or wars preventing international trade, turned to wallpaper to brighten up their rooms.

Early wallpaper featured scenes similar to those depicted on tapestries, and large sheets of the paper were sometimes hung loose on the walls, in the style of tapestries, and sometimes pasted as today. Prints were very often pasted to walls, instead of being framed and hung, and the largest sizes of prints, which came in several sheets, were probably mainly intended to be pasted to walls. Some important artists made such pieces, notably Albrecht Dürer, who worked on both large picture prints and also ornament prints intended for wall-hanging. The largest picture print was the Triumphal Arch commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I and completed in 1515. This measured a colossal 3.57 by 2.95 metres, made up of 192 sheets, and was printed in a first edition of 700 copies, intended to be hung in palaces and, in particular, town halls, after hand-colouring.

Very few samples of the earliest repeating pattern wallpapers survive, but there are a large number of old master prints, often in engraving of repeating or repeatable decorative patterns. These are called ornament prints and were intended as models for wallpaper makers, among other uses.

England seems to have been always a leader in wallpaper; the earliest known sample found on a wall comes from England and is printed on the back of a London proclamation of 1509. It became very popular in England following Henry VIII’s excommunication from the Catholic Church - English aristocrats had always imported tapestries from Flanders and Arras, but Henry VIII’s split with the Catholic Church had resulted in a fall in trade with Europe. Without any tapestry manufacturers in England, English gentry and aristocracy alike turned to wallpaper.

During The Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, the manufacture of wallpaper, seen as a frivolous item by the Puritan government, was halted. Following the Restoration of Charles II, wealthy people across England began demanding wallpaper again - Cromwell’s regime had imposed a boring culture on people, and following his death, wealthy people began purchasing comfortable domestic items which had been banned under the Puritan state. By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain was the leading wallpaper manufacturer in Europe, exporting vast quantities to Europe in addition to selling on the middle-class British market. However this trade was seriously disrupted in 1755 by the Seven Years War and later the Napoleonic Wars, and by a heavy level of duty on imports to France.

In 1748 the English ambassador to Paris decorated his salon with blue flock wallpaper, which then became very fashionable there. In the 1760s the French manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon hired designers working in silk and tapestry to produce some of the most subtle and luxurious wallpaper ever made. His sky blue wallpaper with fleurs-de-lys was used in 1783 on the first balloons by the Montgolfier brothers. The landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Pillement discovered in 1763 a method to use fast colours. Towards the end of the century the fashion for scenic wallpaper revived in both England and France, leading to some enormous panoramas, like the 1804 20 strip wide English one showing the Voyages of Captain Cook, which is still in situ in Ham House, Peabody Massachusetts. Like most of eighteenth century wallpapers, this was designed to be hung above a dado.

During the Napoleonic Wars , trade between Europe and Britain evaporated, resulting in the gradual decline of the wallpaper industry in Britain. However, the end of the war saw a massive demand in Europe for British goods which had been inaccessible during the wars, including cheap, colourful wallpaper. The development of steam-powered printing presses in Britain in 1813 allowed manufacturers to mass-produce wallpaper, reducing its price and so making it affordable to working-class people. Wallpaper enjoyed a huge boom in popularity in the nineteenth century, seen as a cheap and very effective way of brightening up cramped and dark rooms in working-class areas. By the early twentieth century, wallpaper had established itself as one of the most popular household items across the Western world. During the late 1980s though, wallpaper began to fall out of fashion in lieu of Faux Painting which can be more easily removed by simply re-painting.

“Wallpaper” is also a term for computer wallpaper, referring to an image used as a background on a laptop screen, usually for the desktop of a graphical user interface. “Wallpaper” is the term used in Microsoft Windows, while the Mac OS calls it a ‘desktop picture’.

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26/06/2007 by conrad.

The Background of Wallpaper

Wallpaper is a nonwoven (paper) or woven (fabric) backing, decoratively printed for application to walls of a residence or business. Wallpaper is not considered essential to the decoration of a structure; however, it has become a primary method by which to impart style, atmosphere, or color into a room.

The wallpaper industry divides the manufacture of wallpaper into those used in residences and those hung in businesses or other public buildings. The two categories of paper differ in weight, serviceability, and quality standards. Residential wallpapers are made from various materials and can be purchased prepasted or unpasted. There are no mandated serviceability tests for residential papers. Commercial wallpapers are divided into categories based on weight and the backing composition. Commercial wallpapers must have a vinyl surface and pass rigorous physical and visual tests as mandated by the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association.

There are five major methods used to print wallpapers, and designers choose the printing technique based on cost as well as aesthetics.

History of Wallpaper

The earliest wallpapers used in Europe as early as the thirteenth century were painted with images of popular religious icons. Within the next few centuries, wallpapers were hand block-printed, but only remained popular with the poorer classes.

In the sixteenth century, more expensive wallcoverings, depicting tapestries hung in homes of nobility, became popular with the middle classes. Small sheets either carried a repeating image, or several blocks produced a pattern spread across many sheets. Fashionable eighteenth century Americans puchased wallpapers from France and England.

Two problems plagued wallpaper stainers until the 1850’s. One was the problem of producing long sheets of paper for printing and the other was printing attractive wallpaper inexpensively. Until the 1750’s, rag-based paper was individually printed in sheets, then applied to walls. Then, wallpaper manufacturers were pasting the pieces together, ground coating them, then printing. In the late nineteenth century, the paper industry developed “endless” paper, or paper made in very long strips. By 1870, wood pulp had supplanted rag stock, resulting in a very cheap backing for wallcovering.

In the nineteenth century, printing costs were greatly reduced by abandoning labor-intensive block printing in favor of cylinder printing. Wood-block printers applied each color by hand using a separate block for each color in the pattern. Thus, each block had to be inked with the right color, pressed down on the paper, tapped to ensure a quality imprint, lifted up, and reinked as the printer moved down the paper roll—an expensive process. Wood blocks were supplanted by copper cylinders, which carried the design below the surface of the roll, each roll printing a single color. The cylinders were mounted within one machine and

the paper was mechanically fed between cylinders until the paper was completely printed—no hand printing involved. Thus, by about 1885 wood pulp paper printed with cylinders so greatly reduced wallpaper costs that it was cheaper to wallpaper a house in the United States than to paint it.More recent advances include development of additional printing methods, new inks and solvents, and use of latex and vinyl as coatings or laminates.

Raw Materials

Wallpaper consists of a backing, ground coat, applied ink, and sometimes paste on the backing used to adhere the wallpaper to the wall. Non-woven backings can be of ground wood, wood pulp, or wood pulp with synthetic material. Woven backings are those made of sturdy woven textiles such as drill (heavy woven cotton much like jean material). The woven backing is then coated and printed.

The ground coat is the background color laid on the surface, which receives the printed pattern. Coatings or laminates are made of latex or vinyl (polyvinyl chloride) and render the paper durable and strippable. Ground coats also include additives that enhance the ease of handling, opacity, and drapability of the paper.

The paper is printed with inks composed of pigment and a vehicle which ties the ink to the backing. Solvents can be acetone or water, for example. Printers choose inks carefully as the solvents they include affect the drying time and production time between color applications of the paper.

Pastes may or may not be applied to wallpapers. If they are, they are usually made up of cornstarch or wheat starch and are applied wet to the backing. Prepasted wallpapers must be rewetted for adhesion to the wall.

Design

New wallpaper designs are generally derived from sketches purchased from a staff designer or freelance wallpaper designer. The artist lays out the design on tracing paper and completes at least a partial pencil sketch. The marketing and design staff will then decide if the paper is the right “fit” for a specific look or line. If the design is accepted, the artist produces a full-scale color sketch in various colors and palettes.

After the printing process is chosen, the sketch is fine tuned to fit the requirements of the printing process and the pattern is sent to the engraver or screen-maker. Once the cylinder or screens are in place and a few pattern repeats are printed, a “strike off’ (sample wallpaper) is printed to test the color and pattern. When okayed, the paper is commercially printed in large runs.

Making the wallpaper

• 1 Ground wood sheets of paper are produced by using an entire tree, removing the bark, and pressing the tree against a revolving tread, which grinds the wood into slurry. The slurry is used to make a ground wood sheet—a relatively inexpensive wall-paper backing.

  Wood pulp sheets are made by debarking a tree and chipping the tree into a slurry. The mixture is run through a pulp mill where chlorine dioxide and oxygen are added to separate the lignin (which cements the woody cell walls together) from the rest of the wood pulp and bleaches the pulp. Wood pulp sheets with fibers can have synthetic fibers added to give the paper additional texture.

  A roll of paper from the paper mill is 65 in (1.65 m) wide, possibly as long as 22,000 ft (6,706 m), and weighs approximately one ton. Once sold to a printer, each paper roll is cut into six sub-rolls which are 21 in (53 cm) wide by 10,000 ft (3,048 m) long.

Wallpaper Coating

• 2 Before the pattern is printed, the backing must be coated with a ground color. Ground wood sheets are coated with colored vinyl (PVC), which varies in thickness depending on the durability and strippability of paper under production. Vinyl may also be laminated to backings for exceptional serviceability.

  Wood pulp sheets are coated with one or all of the following: kaolin clay for drapability, titanium dioxide for opacity, and latex for ease in handling and color.

Wallpaper Printing

There are five possible types of printing techniques.

• Surface printing. Metal rollers impregnated with a raised rubber pattern are mounted on a single machine. Ink is applied to the surface roller, and the ink lays in the hills or rubber pattern sitting above the surface of the roller. The ink is then pressed onto the paper.
• Gravure printing. Each color of the pattern is printed with a single roller. Copper cylinders are laser-etched then chrome-plated for durability. Large gravure-printing machines hold a maximum of 12 cylinders that together create the whole pattern. The paper roll moves to one cylinder, a back roller picks up color and pushes it against an engraved roller. A steel doctor blade pushes against the engraved cylinder, forcing ink into the etched detail. A rubber roller then presses paper against the cylinder, enabling it to pick up the ink in the valleys of the engraving. Finally, rollers carry the paper away from the cylinder into a dryer, where the ink is set. Once the ink is dry, the process begins again with the next cylinder.
• Silk screen printing. Stencils for each color present in the pattern are created from silk mesh screen, using a photographic
  

  Patterns can be printed onto wall-paper by one of several printing methods, including gravure printing, rotary printing, and silk-screen printing.

  process. First, a photographic negative is made of the pattern. Then, a silk screen approximately 36 in (91 cm) long is stretched taut over a magnesium or wood frame. The screen is coated with a light sensitive emulsion, and the negative is placed on top of the screen. Once hit with bright light, the emulsion hardens in the areas not covered by the negative, forming a stencil.Paper is set upon a long table, a screen stencil is placed on top, and ink is applied by a scraper or squeegee. Color is deposited on the paper where the screen permits the ink to pass through to the paper. The stencil is picked up, moved down the paper, and inked again along the entire length of the paper roll.

  Before the next color is applied, the ink is thoroughly dried. Each screen is carefully put down with blocks, guides, etc. so that the pattern is aligned and repeats without breaks. Hand printing produces patterns with thick, evenly applied color. Theoretically, the number of colors used in the screening process is limitless; however, the high cost of hand printing necessarily limits the number of colors companies can include in the pattern.

• Rotary printing. This type of printing process combines the mechanics of gravure printing with the precision of photographically produced stencils. Mesh stencils are wrapped around hollow tubes mounted within a machine. Ink continuously flows through the film-wrapped tubes and onto paper, imparting a tremendous amount of color (a maximum of 12 colors). This technique resembles the more expensive silk-screening, but it can print much more quickly—approximately 80 yd (73.12 m) of wallpaper per minute.
• Digital printing. This type of printing is the newest form of printing and probably the slowest. Intended for small runs, the advantage digital printing has over conventional printing is there are no expensive costs for separations or printing rollers.  Company Director of Concept Coverings and planbseparations Ltd believes that the future is in digital printing and engraved gravure rollers will be a thing of the past, hence wht he came out of the engraving trade to set up his companies doing digital separations and digital printing.
• http://www.conceptcoverings.co.uk/

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22/05/2007 by conrad.

Buying Wallpaper.
If you have already purchased sufficient wall covering then scroll down to the next section.

First a few notes about buying wallpaper.

When you buy a wall covering ensure that each roll is exactly the same as the rest including batch number and shade number. Also it is better to buy one roll too many (for spare) than end up with not enough to finish the project.

Wall coverings come in a variety of types including self-pasting, washable, peelable and so on, most manufacturers use symbols to indicate wallpaper type, you can find a list of common symbols in our guide to wallpaper product labels.

Roll Calculation

To calculate how many rolls of wall covering are needed use a simple calculation:
1. Measure the perimeter of the room and then divide this figure by the width of the roll (X).
2. Divide the length of the roll by the drop + 10cm (Y).
3. Divide X by Y to give the number of rolls needed.
An example, say the perimeter of the room (including windows/doors) is 14m and the width of the roll is 0.6m then X = 24 (rounded up).

and let’s say the roll length is 11m and the drop (+10cm) is 2.5 so Y = 4.4

Dividing X by Y gives us 24 ÷ 4.4 = 5.45, so we need 6 rolls to complete the project.
Preparing the Walls
If you have already prepared the walls then skip to the next section.

If the walls have an old covering then remove it (see our guide to stripping wallpaper) for some tips.

Inspect the wall surfaces for cracks, holes, loose plaster and any other imperfections.

For small cracks use a suitable fine filler, for larger cracks and holes use a stronger more suitable filler (see manufacturer’s instructions).

To check for any loose plaster, tap the wall around any suspect areas, remove any loose plaster and repair with a suitable plaster repair product (filler if the damaged area is not too big).

When filling try and leave a nice smooth finish, it is better to leave the filled area slightly proud of the surrounding area and then sand down with a fine sandpaper until flush.
Order of hanging
First we need to decide the best place to start hanging the wallpaper, patterned wallpaper is best hung starting at a window and working your way around the room away from the window (see fig 1.1).

To get your starting point measure the window recess and add 2cm, deduct this measurement from the roll width, and then measure out from the window the remainder, this will be your starting point (see fig 1.2).
An example
Let’s say the window recess is 15cm (add 2cm for trimming) and the roll width is 60cm, that means we need to measure out from the window 43cm (60-17=43).
Use a pencil to mark your starting point, and then use either a spirit level or a chalk line to mark a vertical line to use as a guide.

Fig 1.1

Fig 1.2

Prepare the lengths
Once you have your starting point you can work out how many drops it will take to reach the nearest corner, this is how many pieces of wallpaper we need to prepare ready for hanging.

When you know how many drops you need to reach the corner, the next step is to work out how long to cut the lengths. Free match wallpaper is just a case of measuring the drop and adding 10cm for trimming, other wallpapers may need a larger surplus in order to match the pattern correctly (see manufacturer’s instructions).

After working out how long to cut the lengths take your decorating scissors and cut as many lengths as you need (always check that the pattern matches and you have 5cm at both top and bottom for trimming).

note: Usually wallpaper paste takes about 15-20 minutes (see paste packet) until it is ready to use, if you mix it just before you start cutting the lengths it should be ready when you need it.

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19/05/2007 by conrad.

Most modern commercial and residential wallcoverings are produced utilizing surface, flexographic, rotary screen, or rotogravure printing methods.  This page discusses these methods along with modern and historical printing methods.Surface Printing:  The oldest automated printing method still in use today.  Surface machines lay down very heavy amounts of ink.  The ink “creeps” when it hits the paper, so the images are not as crisp as the other methods.  Also, there is no drying between color stations, so the registration (alignment of the printing) is very important to keep the inks from running into each other.  Because of the heavy lay down of ink, and the inexact image rendering, surface printing has a very distinct look.  It is especially well suited for multi-colored floral patterns and classic document designs.  Surface printers can usually print up to 12 colors.

Flexographic Printing:  “Flexo” is an updated version of surface printing.  This printing process was developed in England around 1900 and uses rubber cylinders or rollers.  There is an engraved roller with a raised image to transfer inks to paper.  Unlike surface printing, where the engraved roller is composed of a very hard material, flexographic printing uses a flexible material, like a rubber stamp.  This allows the use of less ink and provides a more exact image.   The least distinctive of any of the print methods, flexo is able to approximate the look of surface, gravure or screen depending on the particular design.  Flexo printing usually prints seven or eight colors; though, some machines may go as high as 12.

Rotary Screen Printing:  An automated form of hand screen printing.  Instead of a raised surface transferring ink to the paper, a hollow cylindrical screen is used with tiny screen openings.  The amount of ink needed is controlled by the size of the screen opening.  So, imagine using your screen window to print the image of a cat.  You would draw the cat on the screen, then cover every area outside of the cat outline.  Then placing the screen flat on a piece of paper, run a paint roller over the screen. The painted image would appear only where the screen openings were not covered, allowing the paint to pass through onto the paper.  That is a simplified version of hand screening.  Rotary screen printing works on the same principle, but the screen is wrapped into a repeatable cylinder, and the inks are applied from inside the cylinder with a squeegee (similar to a windshield wiper).  The characteristics of screen printed product are the ability to print vibrant opaque colors, with crisp edges. The colors are dried between stations so colors can be overlapped, or laid on top of each other, without showing through (unless intentionally using transparent inks).  This is the most expensive type of modern machine printing.  By adding color stations, essentially you have an unlimited number of colors.  Most wallpaper uses seven or eight color stations, although more colors can be added by running a design through twice with a second set of rollers, this is a very expensive option though.

Rotogravure Printing:  Gravure printing, also known as Intaglio, uses a hard engraved cylinder to transfer the image to paper, but unlike surface and flexo, the image is recessed instead of being raised.  The ink collects in the recessed pockets and is absorbed by the paper as it passes over the cylinder.  The deeper the color desired, the deeper the recessed pocket and the more ink transferred.  Because you can provide various tones of a color and the inks are transparent, you have essentially, an unlimited amount of colors and shades.  It only takes four transparent overlapped colors to make up most color ranges (thus the term, 4 color process), but there are usually 6 to 8 stations allowing for specific matched colors to be used and a ground color station.  Most of the borders that duplicate the look of photography or realistic art are printed by the gravure method.

Lithographic Printing:  Lithography is a mechanical planographic process in which the printing and non-printing areas of the plate are all at the same level, as opposed to other methods where the design is cut into the printing block.  Lithography is based on the chemical repellence of oil and water.  Originally, designs were drawn or painted with greasy ink or crayons on specially prepared limestone.  The stone was moistened with water, which the stone accepts in areas not covered by the crayon.  An oily ink, applied with a roller, adheres only to the drawing and is repelled by the wet parts of the stone.  The print was then made by pressing paper against the inked drawing.  Modern lithographic printing methods utilize large aluminum drums for their printing medium.

Block Printing:  This printing method is the forerunner of surface printing.  Block printing involves the carving of a wood print block (usually one for each color) and pressing it sequentially along the length of the paper.  These wood blocks are traditionally made of pear wood printing surface with pine backing.  This technique is obviously time consuming and very labor intensive, as the coloring and print alignment is done by hand.  Once the final printing has been accomplished, hand painted touch-ups are then performed.

Screen Printing:  Also known as hand prints, silk screening, hand screening, and serigraphy.  Involves the use of stencils to transfer the design.  Paint is applied to a frame of stretched silk, polyester, or nylon screen and penetrates areas of the screen not blocked by the stencil pattern.  By using several stencils, many colors can be added to form successive layers in a single print.  Screen printing may also be accomplished by a machine, this method is known as flat bed automatic printing.  Screen printing is the original concept for the modern rotary screen printing process.

Digital Printing Methods

The digital wallcovering manufacturing process begins with a digital file.  It can be created using a digitally generated, scanned, or photographic image. The original design, whether a pattern, photograph, graphic design, or combination of all three, is electronically prepared for digital printing.  Digital printing can be accomplished using different methods:

Dry Transfer Printing:   Utilizes large 54 inch electrostatic printers.  The design is first imaged directly onto Rexam Magic Dry Transfer with Fluorex protection media.  This substrate becomes the “donor” material.  In the second step of the imaging process, the design on the donor material is run through a finishing station that uses heat and pressure to simultaneously transfer the image and a protective polymer laminate layer to the “receiver” material, the actual wallcovering, which is Rexam Unusuwalls wallpaper receiver stock.  The Unusuwalls receiver stock is a robust latex saturated, nylon reinforced, composite paper.  The finished wallcovering features the digital image captured in water and light fast pigment-based toners and protected by a polymer layer.

Dye-Sublimation (Thermal Transfer) Printing:  Dye-Sub printers use a transfer ribbon made of a plastic film.  Panels on the ribbon consist of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dye.  A thermal print head, consisting of thousands of heating elements, capable of precise temperature variations, moves across the transfer ribbon.  The print head heats up as it passes over the film, causing the dyes to vaporize and permeate the glossy surface of the paper before they return to solid form.  Precise temperature variations are responsible for the varying densities of color.  The hotter the heating element, the more dye is vaporized and diffused onto the paper’s surface.  So the main difference between this and other types of digital printing has to do with heat.  The vaporized colors permeate the surface of the paper, creating a gentle gradation at the edges of each pixel, instead of the conspicuous border between dye and paper produced by inkjets.  And because the color infuses the paper, it is also less vulnerable to fading and distortion over time.

Inkjet Printing:  Printing that fires extremely small droplets of ink onto paper to create an image.  If you ever look at a piece of paper that has come out of an ink jet printer, you know that the dots are extremely small (between 10 and 30 dots per millimeter), the dots are positioned very precisely, and in color printers, the dots can have multiple colors.  Different types of ink jet printers form their droplets of ink in different ways.  The main technologies used by printer manufacturers are thermal, bubble, piezo electric, and hybrids of these types, but by far the most popular technique is the bubble jet.  In a bubble jet printer, tiny resistors create heat, and this heat vaporizes ink to create a bubble.  The expansion that creates the bubble causes a droplet to form and eject from the print head. A typical bubble jet print head has hundreds of tiny nozzles, and all of them can fire a droplet simultaneously.  Inkjet printers use three to twelve colors for standard printing and can utilize specialty inks and multi-pass printing for special applications.

Laserjet Printing:   Laser printing works on the principle of static electricity, the same energy that makes clothes in the dryer stick together.  Since oppositely charged atoms are attracted to each other, objects with opposite static electricity fields cling together.  Laser printers uses this principle as a sort of “temporary glue”.  The core component of this system is the photoreceptor, typically a revolving drum. The drum assembly is made out of highly photoconductive material that is discharged by light.  Initially, the drum is given a positive charge by the charge corona wire, a wire with an electrical current running through it.  Some printers use a charged roller instead of a corona wire, but the principle is the same.  As the drum revolves, the printer shines a laser beam across the surface to discharge certain points.  In this way, the laser “draws” the image to be printed, as a pattern of electrical charges-an electrostatic image.  After the pattern is set, the drum is coated with positively charged toner.  The toner clings to the discharged areas of the drum, but not to the positively charged “background”.  With the powder pattern affixed, the drum rolls over a sheet of paper, which is moving along a belt below.  Before the paper rolls under the drum, it is given a negative charge by the transfer corona wire.  This charge is stronger than the negative charge of the electrostatic image, so the paper can pull the toner powder away.  Since it is moving at the same speed as the drum, the paper picks up the image pattern exactly.  To keep the paper from clinging to the drum, it is discharged by the detac corona wire immediately after picking up the toner.  Finally, the printer passes the paper through the fuser, a pair of heated rollers.  These rollers melt loose toner powder, fusing with the fibers in the paper.

Electrostatic Printing:  Paper with a dielectric coating that can retain a static charge is used on printers that can print on paper up to 54″ in width.  The printer places electrons down on the paper and then the paper goes through a digital ink bath.  The digital ink has positively charged pigmented particles that adhere to the negative charge on the paper.  The printer does this for four passes, each a different color.  The digital ink has three major components: solvent, pigment, and polymers.  The solvent is of a low conductivity and a low viscosity that allows the particles to move freely within the solvent.  The particles are constituted of pigment and polymer.  The pigment is the color that you are trying to achieve.  The polymer serves multiple purposes.  It acts as a dispersing aid, stability enhancer, charge director, adhesion promoter, and wetting agent.  The polymer is a very critical component.  The type of polymer is a colloid, which is a homogeneous suspension of particles.  These particles stay in suspension due to electrostatic and steric stability.  The polymer is pigmented and forms a particle that has a positive surface charge.  Since the liquid must retain neutral a negative charge equaling the positive charge is formed from ions.  This double layer of charge is called the Zeta potential.  The Zeta potential can determine the mobility of the particle.  As new printers are developed and the speed of the printers increases, the mobility of the particle becomes critical.

Grand Format Printing:  Often referred to as super-size, these behemoths of large-format printing are high in image size and machine cost, some super-size machines list for more than one million dollars.  Originally intended for billboard imaging and long distance viewing, recent design changes and subsequent in resolution improvements allow users to print banners, murals, and numerous other displays.  Individual characteristics of grand-format machines vary with the machine and manufacturer, the prints, however, have similar uses.  And, although grand-format processes vary, the general classification of these machines is airbrush atomizing-type systems, meaning pressurized air displaces the paint or ink rather than thermal or electrostatic action.  Grand-format, because of its unique delivery systems, often allows use of inordinate media, including acrylic polymers (paint), dyes or inks.  Grand-format also offers the ability to print on various substrates, including, for example, canvas or carpeting.

Digital Photographic:  When properly produced, the end result is a true photographic reproduction from your digital file, free of visible dots that can last many years if properly cared for.  The photographic media is constructed of a resin coated paper or a polyester sheet, coated with a light sensitive gelitan emulsion.  The polyester is generally more durable and is less likely to delaminate.  An additional benefit to the polyester materials, is a higher level of reflectance due to the pearlescent surface of the polyester base.  Some of the poly materials have such a high degree of reflectance, they are referred to as metallic.

At the printing stage, the printer converts your digital file information to pixel data via a software RIP (Raster Image Processor).  A photosensitive media (photographic print paper) is then fed into the machine in preparation for printing.  Some machines use lasers for exposing the paper, while others use light emitting diodes (LEDs).  Some of the laser printers feed the paper into the inside of a large drum, the paper remains stationary and is exposed via the lasers and their associated moving components.  Typically, a mirror spinning at high speeds.  The size of the drum on this style of printer limits the total length that one piece may be. Typically 50″ to 120″ long by 50″ wide.  The remaining laser printers and the LED printers use a linear path where the paper travels past the laser or a long series of LEDs.  As the paper traverses under these light sources, the paper is exposed.  This type of process allows for much longer lengths without seams, still with a width limit of approx 50″.  Future technology may allow the maximum width to reach 80″.  This may at first glance to be a benefit due to the lack of seams at that length, but sheet sizes of even 50″ wide, require a great deal of experience to hang without damage, and should be attempted only by professionals with extensive experience with larger graphics.  The paper is then fed out of the machine into a light-proof container and taken to a “processor” where the paper is “developed” via a series of photo-chemicals.  The paper emerges from the processor dry and ready for the next step, lamination.

Lamination is the process of coating the photographic media with a thin, protective, UV resistant sheet of plastic to protect the light fastness of the image, and guard against scratches, fingerprints, and moisture damage.  Lamination should be considered a requirement as failure to laminate this product will certainly result in a very short life span.  The laminate should be of an archival material such as polyester, polypropylene, acetate, or similar.  PVC materials should be avoided as they leach chlorine gases that will fade photographic materials over a short period of time.  The thickness of laminates vary, typically from three to ten mils thick, depending on the level of protection required.  Surfaces are available from matte finish to high gloss.  This material is very durable; in fact, it can also be used for floor graphics.

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26/04/2007 by conrad.

To complete this task you will need the following items:

* Lining Paper
* Suitable Wallpaper Paste
* Wallpaper Pasting Brush
* Suitable filler (if required) along with a suitable applicator
* Tape Measure
* Spirit Level
* Blunt Pencil
* Paperhanging brush
* Suitable Scissors
* Decorating table (pasting table)

Lining Paper.

The benefits of hanging lining paper far outweigh the work involved, especially if you are going to hang expensive or embossed wallcoverings. Lining paper hides any imperfections on the wall and gives an ideal surface onto which to hang your wallcovering.

The lining paper should hang horizontally (across the wall) if you are going to hang a top covering as this stops the edges of the lining paper and the wallcovering falling in the same place and protruding. It also reduces the risk of the final wallpaper up seating the first.

Wallpaper Roll Calculation

The first thing is to establish how many rolls of lining wallpaper are required, to do this you use our simple calculator.

Firstly make sure your trestles and boards are set at the right height
and are safe and secure.

If the walls have an old wallcovering then remove it (see our guide to stripping wallpaper) making sure to get rid of every trace of wallpaper.

Inspect the wall surfaces for cracks, holes and any loose plaster.

For small cracks use suitable fine filler, for larger cracks and holes use a stronger more suitable filler.

To check for any loose plaster, tap the wall around any suspect areas, remove any loose plaster and repair with a suitable plaster repair product.

When filling try and leave a nice smooth finish, it is better to leave the filled area slightly proud of the surrounding area and then sand down with a fine sandpaper until flush.

Prepare the lengths of hanging wallpaper

First read the manufacturer’s instructions on the paste packet, usually paste takes about 20 minutes until it is ready to use, if this is the case then mix the paste now and it will be ready when you need it.

Take your tape measure and pencil, measure down from the ceiling the width of the roll, mark it with your pencil and then take your spirit level and mark a guide line across the wall level with your first mark

Now measure the length of the wall and add 10cm, take the roll of lining wallpaper and cut as many lengths as you need (remember it is the length of the wall plus 10cm) for the one wall.

Pasting the lining wallpaper

Place one of the lengths of wallpaper face down on the pasting table, ensure you have allowed enough time for the paste to thicken, take your pasting brush and apply the paste to the first length, starting at one end, work the paste evenly over the paper working from the middle to the edges, fold the paper into a loose concertina as you work, this will make the paper easier to work with. Allow the paper to soak for as long as instructed (see label).

Hanging the lining wallpaper

Now take the paper holding the end in one hand and the concertina section in the other. Put the paper into place butting the end into the corner and lining up the bottom edge with your guide line, then work the wallpaper with your paper-hanging brush ensuring not to leave any air bubbles under the paper.

Unfold the paper as you go along the wall removing any air trapped with your paper-hanging brush. When you reach the end push the paper into the corner (there should be 10cm to trim) and then run a blunt pencil or the back of the scissors down the fold as a guide, pull the paper away from the wall and then trim the paper using the fold as a guide, then smooth the paper back onto the wall.

Now take the next length of wallpaper and paste as before (if the paper needs a long time to soak you may wish to paste more than one at a time), butt it up against the first length and work your way along the wall as before ensuring to remove all trapped air.

When you hang the last length the chances are it will need trimming along the bottom of the wall. To trim push the paper into the edge and mark along the paper with your blunt pencil, pull the paper away from the wall just enough for you to be able to trim along the line with your scissors.

Now move onto the next wall and repeat the process, once you have lined the whole room, allow the paper 24 hours to dry out before hanging the top wallcovering.

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29/03/2007 by conrad.

Wallpaper Installation Tips

The art and technique of successfully hanging wallpaper can’t possibly be covered on this page. I am going to try to cover some very important points.

If you are a rookie or in doubt of how to hang paper, I suggest you start in a small room with an inexpensive paper. Go ahead and experiment like I did. You might get lucky!

Backrolling

Backrolling a roll of paper performs two important functions. It allows you to inspect the paper for printing or color flaws. It also works to get the curl out of the paper. Do it with every roll!

20/01/2007 by conrad.

Making the paper

• 1 Ground wood sheets of paper are produced by using an entire tree, removing the bark, and pressing the tree against a revolving tread, which grinds the wood into slurry. The slurry is used to make a ground wood sheet—a relatively inexpensive wall-paper backing.

  Wood pulp sheets are made by debarking a tree and chipping the tree into a slurry. The mixture is run through a pulp mill where chlorine dioxide and oxygen are added to separate the lignin (which cements the woody cell walls together) from the rest of the wood pulp and bleaches the pulp. Wood pulp sheets with fibers can have synthetic fibers added to give the paper additional texture.

  A roll of paper from the paper mill is 65 in (1.65 m) wide, possibly as long as 22,000 ft (6,706 m), and weighs approximately one ton. Once sold to a printer, each paper roll is cut into six sub-rolls which are 21 in (53 cm) wide by 10,000 ft (3,048 m) long.

Coating

• 2 Before the pattern is printed, the backing must be coated with a ground color. Ground wood sheets are coated with colored vinyl (PVC), which varies in thickness depending on the durability and strippability of paper under production. Vinyl may also be laminated to backings for exceptional serviceability.

  Wood pulp sheets are coated with one or all of the following: kaolin clay for drapability, titanium dioxide for opacity, and latex for ease in handling and color.

Printing

There are 5 possible types of printing techniques.

• Surface printing. Metal rollers impregnated with a raised rubber pattern are mounted on a single machine. Ink is applied to the surface roller, and the ink lays in the hills or rubber pattern sitting above the surface of the roller. The ink is then pressed onto the paper.
• Gravure printing. Each color of the pattern is printed with a single roller. Copper cylinders are laser-etched then chrome-plated for durability. Large gravure-printing machines hold a maximum of 12 cylinders that together create the whole pattern. The paper roll moves to one cylinder, a back roller picks up color and pushes it against an engraved roller. A steel doctor blade pushes against the engraved cylinder, forcing ink into the etched detail. A rubber roller then presses paper against the cylinder, enabling it to pick up the ink in the valleys of the engraving. Finally, rollers carry the paper away from the cylinder into a dryer, where the ink is set. Once the ink is dry, the process begins again with the next cylinder.
• Silk screen printing. Stencils for each color present in the pattern are created from silk mesh screen, using a photographic process. First, a photographic negative is made of the pattern. Then, a silk screen approximately 36 in (91 cm) long is stretched taut over a magnesium or wood frame. The screen is coated with a light sensitive emulsion, and the negative is placed on top of the screen. Once hit with bright light, the emulsion hardens in the areas not covered by the negative, forming a stenci
  Paper is set upon a long table, a screen stencil is placed on top, and ink is applied by a scraper or squeegee. Color is deposited on the paper where the screen permits the ink to pass through to the paper. The stencil is picked up, moved down the paper, and inked again along the entire length of the paper roll/
• Before the next color is applied, the ink is thoroughly dried. Each screen is carefully put down with blocks, guides, etc. so that the pattern is aligned and repeats without breaks. Hand printing produces patterns with thick, evenly applied color. Theoretically, the number of colors used in the screening process is limitless; however, the high cost of hand printing necessarily limits the number of colors companies can include in the pattern.

• Rotary printing. This type of printing process combines the mechanics of gravure printing with the precision of photographically produced stencils. Mesh stencils are wrapped around hollow tubes mounted within a machine. Ink continuously flows through the film-wrapped tubes and onto paper, imparting a tremendous amount of color (a maximum of 12 colors). This technique resembles the more expensive silk-screening, but it can print much more quickly—approximately 80 yd (73.12 m) of wallpaper per minute.

• Digital Printing. No cylinders required from costly engravers, only an image from the design/separation artist.  Digital printing is set to revolutionise the way we look at printing.

Prepasting

• Printed wallpaper is rolled with a wet cornstarch or wheat starch-based coating and then dried.

Packaging

• Residential-use wallpapers are cut down from 3,000 yd (2,742 m) rolls to 15 yd (13.71 m) rolls. Commercial-use rolls are generally packaged in 30, 45, and 60 yd (27, 41, and 55 m) rolls. A printed label, run number, and hanging instructions are placed against each roll and shrink wrapped together. Rolls are stored in a warehouse until final shipment.

Quality Control

The Chemical Fabric and Film Association (CFFA) has devised quality standards for commercial-use vinyl coated wallcoverings. The various categories of commercial-use papers have different physical test requirements specified in CFFA Quality Standard documents. All papers must undergo testing on such attributes as minimum coating weight, tensile strength, tear strength, coating adhesion, abrasion resistance, flame spread, smoke development, shrinkage, heat aging, stain resistance, etc.

Each wallpaper printing company conducts visual inspections in the form of spot checks or representative product samplings to ensure their product conforms to certain values established by the manufacturer. Generally, wood pulp and ground wood paper backings are given visual checks to see if there is foreign matter imbedded in the backing. When woven backings are received by printers, the printer checks thread count and physically tests the fabric for minimum requirements.

As the backing is printed, constant visual checks ensure proper adhesion of vinyl to backing, correct color, no streaking or unwanted shading, trimmed edges, etc. Representative samples are physically and visually examined before being cut into smaller rolls.

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20/01/2007 by conrad.

New wallpaper designs are generally derived from artworks purchased from a staff designer or freelance wallpaper designer.The designer shows the client the portfolio they have in order to get a sale. The marketing and design staff will then decide if the design is the right “style” for a specific look or line. If the design is accepted, the artist produces copyright documents and the design is handed over.

After the printing process is chosen, the artwork is fine tuned to fit the requirements of the printing process and the pattern is sent to the engraver (which usually resembles a back street welders shop) or screen-maker(which are usually very organised outfits). Once the cylinder or screens are in place and a few pattern repeats are printed, a “strike off’ (sample wallpaper) is printed to test the color and pattern. When okayed, the paper is commercially printed in large runs.

Nowadays, digital wallpaper is taking over this process and there is no longer a need to purchase very expensive copper rollers that will only be used once. Instead clients are focusing their spend on creative wallpaper in smaller runs with the focus more on design and creativity, rather than expensive manufacturing(engineering) costs

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20/01/2007 by conrad.

Wallpaper consists of a backing, ground coat, applied ink, and sometimes paste on the backing used to adhere the paper to the wall. Non-woven backings can be of ground wood, wood pulp, or wood pulp with synthetic material. Woven backings are those made of sturdy woven textiles such as drill (heavy woven cotton much like jean material). The woven backing is then coated and printed.

The ground coat is the background color laid on the surface, which receives the printed pattern. Coatings or laminates are made of latex or vinyl (polyvinyl chloride) and render the paper durable and strippable. Ground coats also include additives that enhance the ease of handling, opacity, and drapability of the paper.

The paper is printed with inks composed of pigment and a vehicle which ties the ink to the backing. Solvents can be acetone or water, for example. Printers choose inks carefully as the solvents they include affect the drying time and production time between color applications of the paper.

Pastes may or may not be applied to wallpapers. If they are, they are usually made up of cornstarch or wheat starch and are applied wet to the backing. Prepasted wallpapers must be rewetted for adhesion to the wall.

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20/01/2007 by conrad.

The earliest wallpapers used in Europe as early as the thirteenth century were painted with images of popular religious icons. These “domino papers” were pasted within homes of the devout; however, they also enlivened the bleak homes of the poor. Within the next few centuries, papers were hand block-printed, but only remained popular with the poor.By the sixteenth century, however, more expensive wallcovering, depicting tapestries hung in homes of nobility, became popular with the middle class. Small sheets either carried a repeating image, or several blocks produced a pattern spread across many sheets. Fashionable eighteenth century Americans puchased wallpapers from France and England; “paper stainers” were producing wallpapers in this country by the early nineteenth century if not before.

Two problems plagued wallpaper stainers until the mid-nineteenth century. One was the problem of producing long sheets of paper for printing, the other was printing attractive wallpaper inexpensively. Until the mid-1700s, rag-based paper was individually printed in sheets, then applied to walls. Then, wallpaper manufacturers were pasting the pieces together, ground coating them, then printing. In the late nineteenth century, the paper industry developed “endless” paper, or paper made in very long strips. By 1870, wood pulp had supplanted rag stock, resulting in a very cheap backing for wallcovering.

In the nineteenth century, printing costs were greatly reduced by abandoning labor-intensive block printing in favor of cylinder printing. Wood-block printers applied each color by hand using a separate block for each color in the pattern. Thus, each block had to be inked with the right color, pressed down on the paper, tapped to ensure a quality imprint, lifted up, and reinked as the printer moved down the paper roll—an expensive process. Wood blocks were supplanted by copper cylinders, which carried the design below the surface of the roll, each roll printing a single color. The cylinders were mounted within one machine and the paper was mechanically fed between cylinders until the paper was completely printed—no hand printing involved. Thus, by about 1885 wood pulp paper printed with cylinders so greatly reduced wallpaper costs that it was cheaper to wallpaper a house in the United States than to paint it.

More recent advances include development of additional printing methods, new inks and solvents, and use of latex and vinyl as coatings or laminates.

Bespoke digitally printed wallpaper is the future!

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20/01/2007 by conrad.

Wallpaper is a nonwoven (paper) or woven (fabric) backing, decoratively printed for application to walls of a residence or business. Wallpaper is not considered essential to the decoration of a structure; however, it has become a primary method by which to impart style, atmosphere, or color into a room.

The wallpaper industry divides the manufacture of wallpaper into those used in residences and those hung in businesses or other public buildings. The two categories of paper differ in weight, serviceability, and quality standards. Residential-use wallpapers are made from various materials and can be purchased prepasted or unpasted. There are no mandated serviceability tests for residential papers. The commercial-grade wallpapers are divided into categories based on weight, backing composition, and laminate/coating thickness. All commercial-use wallpapers must have a vinyl surface and pass rigorous physical and visual tests as mandated by the Chemical Fabrics and Film Association.

There are four (Now five) popular methods used to print wallpapers, and designers choose the printing technique based on cost as well as aesthetics.

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