It is easy to think of wallpaper as a relatively modern invention, that adorned the houses of Victorian-era homes and later. However, the history of wallpaper is exceptionally long, complex and filled with a range of parallel traditions and conflicts.

Because of these largely independent movements the earliest invention date of wallpaper is not entirely clear. However, it is believed that wallpaper may predate the invention of paper itself, as homes in Ancient China had rice paper glued to the walls as early as 200BC.

However, between then and the first surviving piece of wallpaper is 1700 years of different papermaking traditions coalescing together.

The earliest wallpapers came from the tradition of decorative tapestries hanging on the walls of wealthy homes.

They were used for much the same reason a wallpaper specialist decorates an accent wall; they add colour, an insulating layer to bare stone walls and express the ideas of the homeowner.

Most people wanted tapestries, but due to the expense of the materials, the need for dedicated weavers to craft them or the common advent of war blocking international trade efforts, most wall coverings were beyond their means.

However, the development of actual paper and early woodcut printing techniques meant that patterned wall coverings were attainable, and many early designs were made to resemble popular tapestries, hung loosely on the walls to give the impression of a tapestry.

Eventually, larger prints were made on several sheets that were designed to be pasted to the wall, one of the earliest surviving examples being from 1509, and resembling a repeating pomegranate design.

This early design would prove to be very popular, and once the convenience of wallpaper became clearer to the upper class, they would also adopt wallpaper as the standard wall coverings for castles until the end of the English Civil Wall, where they were banned under Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate.

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