Gallica wallpaper archive

A wallpaper-related online resource..... Between 1799 and 1803  French wallpaper manufacturers were obliged to make a legal deposit of samples from all the designs they produced. As a result the Bibliothèque nationale's Department of Prints and Photographs has a massive collection of 2250 pristine wallpaper samples from this period.  Until 2007 when they were added to the Gallica database, these were virtually impossible to study. Now they can be searched by name of manufacturer, theme or date of deposition and digital images accessed with an few mouse-clicks.

The blog cited below has loads of illustrations of the most interesting papers.  Here is just one which I  particularly liked.  It is a nice politically correct "post-Revolutionary" Jacquemart et Bénard paper of 1801 showing a departing soldier and couples dancing round a maypole.  In the maypole scene banners inscribed "Liberté" have apparently been erased and replaced by the crowns of foliage! 

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6900637z.r=+revolution.langF

References

Wallpaper on Gallica - quick link

"L’âge d’or du papier peint est dans Gallica" , post by "Peccadile" dated 27/01/2014 on Orion en aéroplane ~ Blog culturel
http://peccadille.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/papier-peint-xviiie-siecle-gallica/