Printed wallpaper

The art of printing wallpaper is roughly as old as the art of printing books.

The oldest printed wallpaper found in Sweden was put up in a merchant's house in Malmö back in the 1570s.

It was not Swedish, but manufactured somewhere on the Continent. Only in the 1740s is it known for certain that wallpaper was being printed in Sweden. The great majority of wallpaper makers were found in Stockholm.

The Hälsingland farmers' interest in the art of decoration existed as early as the 1700s, but it flourished most in the mid-1800s. They consciously purchased expensive hand-painted or printed wallpaper – sometimes all the way from France – and always in the style of the times. These impressive rooms displayed all the beautiful things they could afford, but at the same time a feeling for both fashion and ostentation. The results were rooms that were so lavish that later on they were respected and preserved up until the present day.

When printed wallpaper became common among Hälsingland farmers in the 1840s and 1850s, it was often a matter of marking high status in rooms that were intended for celebrations. There was no competition between the wallpaper and the wall paintings; wallpaper was also put up by the country artists. (landskapskonstnär)

Only one color at a time could be printed to begin with; in addition, the wallpaper had to hang-dry for a day before the next color could be printed. This affected prices, of course – the more colors, the more expensive the wallpaper. In the 1860s, new technology came out that pushed prices down substantially. Swedish factories began machine-printing wallpaper. These now became reasonable in price even for the non-propertied classes; additionally, they could afford to put up new wallpaper every few years.