This morning webinar will explore the history, production and repair of wallpaper in Ireland with the country’s leading expert conservator, David Skinner. Drawing on his extensive experience both as a maker and a researcher of historic wallpapers, David will chart the evolution of patterns used to decorate Irish houses from the early eighteenth century until the demise of the Irish ‘paper-staining’ trade at the close of the nineteenth century. Journals, letters, invoices and newspaper advertisements are among the sources to be explored, including the large indigenous decorators and suppliers of wallpaper to smaller-scale paper-hangers, tax on wallpaper, and the trade in smuggled wallpaper between Ireland and Victorian England.

David will explore approaches to the conservation and repair of historic wallpapers in situ, in the workshop, and through the process of reproduction of missing fragments and entire decorative schemes. This includes the processes of cleaning, applying backing substrates, protective layers and glues, as well as decorative borders and trims, ceiling papers and ‘sanitary’ papers.

This morning event will provide invaluable instruction to researchers, architects, building owners/managers and those involved in the study of historic interiors with the leading authority in this field.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

David Skinner is a wallpaper maker, conservator and researcher living in County Leitrim. He is the author of ‘Wallpaper in Ireland, 1700-1900’, published in 2014 by Churchill House Press.

David Skinner Wallpapers, established in 1990, makes hand screen-printed wallpapers based on historic examples, supplying customers in Ireland, the U.K., Europe and the U.S.A. Recent wallpaper installations include Carton House, Co. Kildare, Morris Jumel Mansion, Manhattan, Jane Austen House, Alton, Hampshire, The Dublin Tenement Museum, Henrietta Street.

David’s work over the past thirty years has been informed by continuous research into the history of the Irish wallpaper trade and the use of wallpaper in this country. Surveying historic buildings, retrieving and archiving examples of historic paper, and undertaking conservation of historic papers where they survive have been a major component of the studio’s practice.

In 2020 David donated his personal archive of over 250 examples of historic wallpapers from Ireland the Office of Public Works. A permanent exhibition of a selection has been open in Kilkenny Castle since summer 2022.