Issue 08
WONDERWALL
By Julie Gerstein
Horrid pastel borders, flocked fruit kitchen walls, and tacky paisley-wallpapered bathrooms—interior design staples in many a suburban household—certainly no longer constitute an appealing look for design-savvy homeowners. “People burned out on wallpaper. It became grandmotherly,” says John Sherman regarding the relative dearth of wallpaper design since the ‘80s. Sherman, founder of New Orleans-based wallpaper firm Flavor Paper, is among the new crop of designers taking wallpaper out of the suburbs and into city homes, clubs, and restaurants.
“In the 1970s, everybody that came in here was in their 50s and 60s. Today, many of my customers are in their 20s,” says Paul Sperling, owner of Philadelphia-based Colonial Wallcoverings. Sperling’s been in the wallpaper business for more than 30 years, and attributes wallpaper’s resurgence to changing attitudes about design. “People now are looking for things that are original. They’re putting less in their homes furniture-wise and are instead looking for elements to stand out and make a statement.”
And that’s good news for Sherman. “I didn’t know anyone that made wallpaper for my demographic,” says the 30- something former real estate entrepreneur. In 2003, Sherman found a 50-foot-long printing table in Seattle and hauled it, along with a set of 300 screens, to New Orleans. Since then, he’s made dozens of nightclub-friendly designs, from eye-poppingly psychedelic to soft and ultra-femme.
Designers Ophir Tanz and Carly Margolis of Cavern Wallpaper aim for slightly more demure patterns. Though neither has any formal design background, the childhood friends have managed to generate buzz with their first collection, a floraand- fauna-inspired series. “Wallpaper is becoming more of an art piece and less of a wall covering,” says Tanz.
Paul Simmons and Alistair McAuley of Timorous Beasties have been in the wallpaper business for more than 16 years, having discovered the design-showcasing power of wallpaper. “We originally started out as fabric designers, and still are, but wallpaper is actually a cheaper way of showing and producing a lot of our designs,” Simmons explains. The Glasgow-based wallpaper and design firm’s designs range from minimalist geometric patterns to multi-tonal damask prints and illustrationheavy toiles. Turning the traditional pastoral Victorian life toile on its head, the Beasties’ toiles depict a harsh and ugly reality—strung out junkies and dilapidated council flats—in beautifully rendered lines and soft tones. Their ironic merger of old and new garnered them a nomination for the 2005 British Design Museum’s Designer of the Year Award.
Hand-screen-printed paper doesn’t come cheap. Now that more established designers like Karim Rashid, Werner Berges, and Ulf Moritz are getting in the wallpaper game, homeowners should expect to drop substantial coin for a new dining room design. Berges’s papers go for roughly $400 a roll; Cavern Wallpaper’s designs start at around $155 a roll, as do Flavor Paper’s; the Beasties’ papers run between $120 and $700 per roll. Whatever the cost, though, it’s well worth it for design aficionados, says Sperling. “For someone that’s going for a unique look, impact is the big thing. With some of these prints being so bold, a little bit goes a long way.”