Printed paper wallpaper in a light gray shade with a classy small checkered pattern in soft blue and gray tones. Printed in the traditional way in old rollers, one color at a time. Straight pattern fit. Very good light fastness and wipeable. The wallpapers are applied edge to edge or with a wire edge. Edge-cut. Not pre-pasted.

This particular wallpaper originally hung on the walls of a farm office at Wirum manor in Småland, and the date should be around 1880. It may be justified to point out that the wallpaper was on the walls, because small-patterned wallpapers often ended up on the ceiling in the gloomy, over-decorated interiors of the late 19th century. As wallpaper on the walls of simple cottages, or rooms such as farmhouses, kitchens and chambers, “The Farm Office” is an unbeatable mood creator along with white boarded ceilings, shed floors and rather dark carpentry.

Wallpaper history. It was not until the latter part of the 19th century that wallpaper became the property of every man. Poor families often bought thin, single-color wallpapers for their walls, known as 25-penny wallpapers. Rich families with large houses and apartments could instead excel with lots of patterns and colors in their rooms. But what really separated the rich from the poor was not the patterns, which were quite similar from one castle to the next, but the number of colors. The more colors, the more expensive the wallpaper was the rule. And the same rule still applies today.

In the late 19th century, a clear hierarchy emerged between different wallpaper patterns. In fine rooms such as the dining room and drawing room, the large-patterned wallpapers came in many shades of color, even gold. In simple spaces such as the kitchen and hallway, the small-patterned wallpapers came in instead.