Decorative techniques
Curator Ingela Broström, Gävleborg County Administrative Board,
Chair of the Swedish Association for the Preservation of Buildings

Wallpaper has long been regarded as a bourgeois phenomenon having nothing in common with "genuine" folk culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead, wallpaper should be regarded as one decorative technique among others in the repertoire of the folk painters. For more than half a century, they existed side by side with wall painting. The same painter could paint marble effects in the porch and Bible motifs in the salon, and put up wallpaper in the bedroom - on the same job. He often complemented the wallpaper with his own stencilled borders.

At the end of the 19th century, it was possible to print colourful and well-defined patterns by machine at affordable prices. Swedish wallpaper production increased so much that it was hardly necessary to import at all. Now, paper took over, but the skill of the painters could still find its expression in the form of richly decorated ceilings and refined corner ornamentation.