PAPER HANGINGS. The word Hang ings was originally arid properly applied to the woven of embroidered tapeStry with Which the walls of apartments were covered. From the time necessary for their production, these were too costly for any olasSeS but the wealthy. About 200 Years ago, however,. Mode was devised of printing or a pattern on Sheets of paper, and pasting them against the walls of a room. These • are Paper-Hang ings, and they hare greatly contributed to the comfort and cleahliness of domestic apart merits.
There are three of producing the required devicif i-1. Wooden blocks are served representing in relief the Outlines of the figure; an impression is taken from these blocks, and the deVice is Completed by paint :ng with a pencil. 2. A sheet of paper, leather, in, or copper, is hut out into the required levice, and laid on the paper to be stained ; nush, dipped in a coloitred pigment, and worked over the surface of the perfbrated ?late, conveys the pigment through all the ?erforationS, and forina a pattern on the Japer... 3. A block is carved for each of the ;olourS to be employed, and an impression rom all the blocks in airceession fills up the lesign CM the paper. The first of these Modes.
is too slow and costly for ordinary use ; the second produces imperfect outlines, and is now chiefly employed, under the name of Stencilling, to paint a pattern on the plaster walls of a room, without using paper hangings ; the third is the mode almost ex clusively employed at the present day. Each
block is furnished with small pins at the corners, by the aid of whith the successive impressions are made to correspond properly. As many as seven or eight colours are sometimes em ployed in one pattern, and, generally speaking, there must be as many blocks as there are colours.
Progress is, however, now being made towards the application of cylinder-printing to paper hangings. Hitherto these papers have not vied in beauty with block-prints ; but some of the London houses have recently succeeded in producing beautiful specimens by the cylinder, in which six or eight colours are printed by one passage through the machine. A single machine is capable of printing in one hour 200 pieces of paper, each 12 yards long ; or 18,000 yards per day. It serves to illustrate the advance both of paper making and of paper-staining, that the paper upon which the patterns are printed by cylin der is manufactured in lengths of 2880 feet; each length is, after printing, cut into 80 pieces of 12 yards long each.
A reduction of the duty charged on all kinds of paper has had a considerable effect in ex tending the use and improving the manufac ture of paper-hangings.