4 IDENTIFYING PATTERN STYLES

If a wallpaper fragment is found and is large enough, the third consideration is identification of the printed or painted pattern. When the style is identified, it can be compared to available information on the popular use of designs in study collections or references like Lynn (1980), which include a host of distinct categories of styles of French, English, German, Chinese, and American wallpapers from the mid-1700s through the early 20th century. This area of study is the domain of wallpaper historians, and the analyst must rely on their research as well as other documentary materials such as photographs, genre paintings, household inventories, or correspondence. Two examples demonstrating the interdependence of historian and analyst are the survival of a photograph in the picture collection of Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, showing the original wallpaper and border in the Drawing Room at Adena (Lynn 1980) and the fact that the French scenic paper “Les Voyages D'Anthenor” (1820–25), used at Piedmont (early 1800s) in Charles Town, West Virginia, and particularly in vogue in the early 19th century, is documented as the work of Joseph Dufour (fig. 11).