Vintage wallpaper.(Design notes)(Vintage Glamour collection of Cole and Son Wallpapers Ltd.)

Cole and Son in North London has been at the forefront of the wallpaper revival in the twenty-first century. Founded in 1873, this manufacturer has a growing and valuable archive of over four thousand hand-carved wooden blocks that its designers draw upon to create beautiful new papers. The firm's oldest block is for an Elizabethan wallpaper found at Besford Court in Worcestershire, which they manufactured to commemorate the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare's birth. Also in its archives are the blocks for Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's designs of the 1840s for the Houses of Parliament, as well as blocks designed by William Morris, Charles Francis Annesley Voysey, and Walter Crane. The firm has copied medallions and stripes from seventeenth-century decorative schemes and designs that Frederick Crace used for the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.

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Cole and Son recently introduced the Vintage Glamour collection of wallpapers designed by Coles Studio in collaboration with the Royal Oak Foundation, the American membership affiliate of the British National Trust. This new collection pays homage to a sophisticated age of sweeping entrances and Hollywood allure dating from the roaring 1920s to the stylish 1950s. The sixteen wallpapers simulate buffed crocodile skin, Boulle tortoiseshell veneers, and grained leather, evoking designs once found in ocean liners, luxury hotels, and haute couture. The theater sets of plays by Noel Coward inspired ...