How Is Wallpaper Printed?
Wallpaper can be traced back to the Chinese gluing rice paper to their walls as early as 200 BCE. In Europe, early wallpaper for the well-to-do was painted by artists, such as the 50 rolls commissioned by Louis XI of France by Jean Bourchidon. Wallpaper as we know it now, however, developed with the advent of the printing press. Does this Spark an idea?
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Modern Methods
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Printing methods used for wallpaper use different methods to transfer the design to the coverings. Surface and flexographic printing machines both use cylinders with raised areas, but the cylinders used by “flexo” machines are made of flexible materials, usually rubber. In contrast, with gravure printing the ink is held in tiny cells in the cylinder, with deeper cells resulting in a deeper printed tone. Hand screen printing uses a flat mesh screen held in a frame, with a substance, such as wax, blocking the screen openings except in the area of the design image. A rubber squeegee pushes the ink along the surface and forces it through the openings and onto the wallpaper. Rotary screen printing uses a screen wrapped into a repeatable cylinder with an internal squeegee blade. Digital printing methods use non-impact technologies to electronically create and print images or patterns.
Applications
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Surface printing is used for traditional florals and juvenile and country motifs, and the flexographic process for country, colonial, floral and mini-print designs. Hand screen printing is used for specialty and custom products, while rotary screen printing is used for graphics, floral paisley and geometrics. Gravure, the costliest manufacturing process, is used to achieve a photographic effect. Digital printing is mostly used for murals and borders, according to Surface Materials.com.
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Characteristics
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Surface printing has a very distinct look, due to the heavy amount of ink it lays down and the inexact image rendering of the process. Flexographic printing, in contrast, is the least distinctive method, able to approximate the look of surface, gravure or screen printing. Rotary screen printing produces vibrant opaque colors with crisp edges, while gravure printing provides a range of tones, according to Wallpaper Installer.com.
Historical Methods
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Lithography, invented in 1798 in Germany, is based on the repellency of oil and water. Designs were drawn or painted onto limestone with greasy ink or crayons and the stone moistened with water, accepting it on the non-covered areas. Then an oily ink, repelled by the wet parts and adhering to the drawing, was applied with a roller. Block printing used a carved wood print block, pressed sequentially along the length of the paper, according to Wallpaper Installer.com.
New Uses
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Digital methods are increasingly finding uses in home decorating, according to an October, 2006 article by Barbara A. Pellow for Digital Output.net. Digital technologies allow custom designs such as patterns that extend for several yards without repeats, or taking a photograph of an existing pattern (from dining china, for instance) to use as a wall border.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit garden wallpaper. image by mdb from Fotolia.com
