Wallpaper sample about 50 cm of our wallpaper Hullebo pink

Pattern height 40 cm

With the advent of Art Nouveau at the turn of the 20th century, a wide variety of new and modern patterns were introduced for wallpaper and textiles. There was everything from the strictly geometric to the undulating and floral. This particular wallpaper belongs to the latter category with its finely scattered flower stems and lobed leaves that form a playful and harmonious expression.

One of the great sources of inspiration at the time was Japanese woodblock prints with their masterfully composed plant decorations, and perhaps one senses some similar features here.

The Hullebo wallpaper is available in both a mild deep red and a muted medium green, both typical fashion colors of the period around 1900-1910. Together with a matching border, the pattern gives a stylish Art Nouveau feel and is particularly effective in combination with joinery painted in soft tones of, for example, Art Nouveau beige, English red or green umber.

Hullebo was found in one of the workers’ dwellings in Gysinge during an inventory in the early 1990s and has been waiting for a reprint ever since. Now it was finally time!

The wallpaper fits well in both small and large rooms, but here in Gysinge we think the pink would fit extra well as a bedroom wallpaper, as it gives a cozy and homely feeling.

The Lars-Daniels farm in Järvsö, is a typical Hälsingland farm from the first half of the 19th century; two-storey, timber, red colored, many windows with green hand-blown glass panes, decorated bridge sprig … The main building has remained largely untouched since it was built. Since it was mostly used as a mobilization camp for the military during the 20th century, there has been no reason to renovate it. The “Great Chamber” is one of the most well-preserved rooms in the house and this stenciled wallpaper comes from there. The date is around 1840. The wallpaper is a mixture of styles; First, one of the 18th century’s favorite patterns – sparsely scattered floral bouquets against a plain background, but here combined with a delicate, lace-like medallion pattern of the type that came with the neo-rococo only a hundred years later. This is what is so interesting about the interior design of the common people, often unconventional style combinations, often “extra everything” but as a final product still neither vulgar nor tasteless. The commoners were masters of this balancing act. Another safe stylistic move is that the stenciled wallpaper is often combined with a calm, single-colored breast panel up to window height, so that the room, despite the large-patterned wallpaper, still became calm and well-proportioned.The original wallpaper is painted with glue paint on rag paper and has been over-papered several times, which is why many of the finest details in the lace pattern have been lost over time. When reprinting the wallpaper, we have been careful to preserve this patina and have chosen not to reconstruct the pattern to perfection. The soul of Gysinge’s wallpapers is generally that they are not so perfect.

“Farstun” is a typical Hälsingland stencil wallpaper from the last half of the 19th century. The era is known in Sweden as the Karl Johan period and had a penchant for silk-imitating patterns in sober colors. But very few could afford such silk wallpapers. Most had to make do with imitations, usually in the form of stencilled patterns in glue paint on rag paper. The middle classes of the population, priests and burghers, were also unable to afford expensive silk damask, but instead turned to local painters who became masters at imitating fabric patterns using stencils and silk-like colors. Finally, farmers also embraced the fashion for silk wallpaper, but translated the wallpaper patterns into bright vernacular colors. We have found this wallpaper in several farms in the Järvsö area where the color scheme blue, gray, red is the most common and the wallpaper that most closely resembles the farmers’ traditional colors. The more subdued color schemes in the catalog, on the other hand, are more typical of the 19th century and the Karl Johan era. Stenciled wallpaper is almost always combined with a single-color breast panel up to window height, made of wood or gray rag paper. This gives the rooms a sense of calm and harmonious proportions, even if the wallpaper patterns happen to be wild and colorful.

When, in connection with the restoration of one of the attics at Wirums Säteri in Småland, we found the first flake of the wallpaper “Förmaket”, we thought we had found a real 18th century wallpaper. The diagonal checkered pattern with a small flower sprig in each square breathes very typical rococo. The flaming gray glue paint base also gives an unmistakable feeling of hand printing. Everything in our 18th century theory was right – until we found flag number two and saw that the pattern was printed on cellulose paper and not on paper made of cloth rag, as it should have been if it was genuine 18th century. The wallpaper also turned out to be made on a roll, not on glued sheets of paper, as in the 18th century. Today we know better. “Förmaket” is a wallpaper from around 1860, but of a low-key, elegant diagonal-patterned type that became popular already 100 years earlier – and is still one of the wallpaper printers’ favorite patterns. What distinguishes Gysinge’s wallpaper from other reprints is the uneven, handmade impression and the shifting ground color. Early machine printing art, one could define the wallpaper as.