The Process of Paper-hanging.
This, then, is an outline of the mode by which paper-hangings are prepared; and we must next speak of the method of pasting them against the walls of a room. As the long pieces or strips of paper do not average more than two feet in width, it is obvious that a great many joints must be made in covering the side of a room with paper. These joints proceed not crosswise, but perpendicularly from the ceiling downwards; and considerable care is necessary to insure the continuance of the pattern on the two sides of a joint: it is in this that the principal art of the paper-hanger consists.
A strip of printed paper twelve yards long is called technically a piece. This piece has ragged unfinished edges, and the edges are to be cut away in a straight even line until a proper part of the pattern is reached; for the blocks are so carved, that one edge always corresponds exactly with the opposite edge. The wall, which is generally plastered, is washed or sized, and made fit to receive the paper. The cement with which the paper is fixed up is thin paste; and when that paste is ready, the paper-hanger proceeds as follows. Supposing the height of the papered part of a room to be twelve feet, he cuts on four yards from his piece of paper, with the two ends accurately at right angles to the long edges. He then lays it down on a flat board or bench, face downwards, and coats the whole of the back of the paper with liquid paste, by means of a brush. He then slightly folds the paper over, so as to prevent it from dragging on the ground, and, mounting a ladder or a pair of steps, applies one end of the paper to the upper part of the wall, close to the cornice: then, by letting the paper unfold itself, it falls to its full length, and extends down to the bottom of the room, close to the wall. The workman has now to judge, by the eye, whether the edges of the paper are perfectly vertical, for the whole beauty of the work depends in a great measure on this circumstance. When he has ascertained that the paper hangs perpendicularly, he proceeds to press it firmly to the wall, by means of cloths; and the paste has so far softened the paper, that wrinkles of every kind disappear. This done, he cuts off another piece twelve feet, or four yards long, and pastes it against the wall in precisely the same manner. But here great precautions are necessary; for the workman has to attend to three particulars in fixing the second piece by the side of the first:—to cause it to hang vertically,—to make an accurate joining of the pattern,—and to refrain from soiling the surface of the first piece by the paste of the second. All these are precautions which can only be properly attended to after considerable practice.
When the workman is approaching an angle or corner of the room, he must cut his paper to such a width as will just reach the corner, for it is generally difficult to bring the paper round both sides of the angle. In the case which we have supposed, the height of the room is just one-third the length of the piece of paper, so that there need be no joints at any intermediate part of the height. But if the height were any other amount,—say ten feet—three pieces of that length would leave a fourth only six feet long; and as such a piece is not likely to be wasted, it follows that there must be a joint at some intermediate point between the floor and the ceiling. Such a joint requires especial care, as the pattern has to be attended to both in a vertical and a horizontal direction.
When the side of a room is broken by recesses, projections, &c., a good workman will so arrange his pieces of paper as to give a symmetrical appearance to the two sides of a projection of a recess, so that the same part of the pattern which comes to the right hand edge shall also be seen at the left hand. In papering a staircase, when the upper and lower edges are oblique and not horizontal, it is of course necessary that the ends of the paper should be cut in a corresponding manner, in order that the long joints should be vertical.
As it is difficult to bring the ends of the paper precisely to the cornice at the top and to the skirting-board at the bottom, it is usual to hide those ends by pasting a narrow strip of paper along the top and bottom of a room, which gives a neat finish to them. This strip of paper is printed in colours with some pleasing device; and as a broad piece is printed as quickly as one two or three inches wide, it is customary to carve a block with twelve or twenty repetitions of the same narrow pattern, side by side; so that the whole are printed on one sheet. The paper-hanger has therefore carefully to cut the strips one from another, and paste them round the wall at the parts which we have mentioned, and sometimes up the corners of the room likewise.
It is sometimes preferred, instead of papering the walls of a room, to stencil them. In this case the plaster of the wall is prepared in a smooth manner to receive the distemper colour, and the pattern is stamped or printed on the wall in a manner almost exactly the same as that which we have described respecting stencilling paper-hangings. This mode is not susceptible of so much neatness as the use of printed or stamped paper, and is only employed for common apartments.
There is occasionally a kind of work which falls into the hands of the paper-hanger very different from those we have mentioned—viz., fixing gilt wood mouldings round the top and bottom of a room, instead of pasting a paper bordering in the same place. What little we shall have to say on this subject will be contained in the following chapter.