Wallpaper
Wallpaper
ca. 1870-1880 (made)
ca. 1870-1880 (made)
| Artist/Maker | |
| Place of origin |
In his novel Hard Times (1854), Charles Dickens parodied some of the views of those people in the early 1850s who were promoting reform in design. To illustrate the faults of popular wallpaper patterns to a class of schoolchildren, his fictional official contemptuously describes a paper with repeated naturalistic images of horses. However, it is unlikely that a paper such as this one in the V&A’s collection would have been used in an ordinary domestic context. The subject matter would have made it an appropriate decoration for a public house, a games room or a sportsmen's club.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | Wallpaper (generic title) |
| Materials and techniques | Colour machine print, on paper |
| Brief description | Portion of wallpaper with a design of medallions containing pictorial representations of horse-racing scenes; Colour machine print; Probably by Heywood, Higginbottom & Smith, Manchester; English; ca. 1870-80. |
| Physical description | Portion of wallpaper with a design of medallions containing pictorial representations of horse-racing scenes; Colour machine print, on paper. |
| Dimensions |
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| Style | |
| Credit line | Given by the Wall Paper Manufacturers Ltd |
| Object history | Given by the Wall Paper Manufacturers Ltd. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | In his novel Hard Times (1854), Charles Dickens parodied some of the views of those people in the early 1850s who were promoting reform in design. To illustrate the faults of popular wallpaper patterns to a class of schoolchildren, his fictional official contemptuously describes a paper with repeated naturalistic images of horses. However, it is unlikely that a paper such as this one in the V&A’s collection would have been used in an ordinary domestic context. The subject matter would have made it an appropriate decoration for a public house, a games room or a sportsmen's club. |
| Bibliographic references |
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| Collection | |
| Accession number | E.1819-1934 |
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| Record created | March 14, 2003 |
| Record URL |
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