Perceiving Prints in 18th Print Rooms: Commerce, Play and Display

In the last half of the eighteenth century, ‘print rooms’ — created by adhering etchings and engravings directly onto walls — were a fashionable mode of high-end English domestic interior decoration. Adhered prints included a broad selection of eighteenth-century print production: from Hogarth’s satirical works to Piranesi’s vedute. Commercially-produced paper borders were available to frame the prints, and tradesmen of renown could be engaged to artfully arrange print rooms for discerning clients. Only a handful of extant print rooms survive, however the multi-disciplinary nature of the print room — as a locus of collecting and display, interior decoration, marketing and craft practice — means that the phenomena is a fascinating insight into the re-interpretation and re-location of prints.

How did prints — previously collected in portfolios and albums in libraries — migrate onto walls? Did the re-purposing of prints change their perceived value? How can we locate the print room within other eighteenth-century English print collecting, arrangement and display practices?

This paper provides an introduction to the print room in England and Ireland, within the inter-connected contexts of commerce, collecting and creativity. Referring to new evidence from archives, diaries and house guides of the period, responses to print rooms by eighteenth-century audiences are also explored.

Image detail:
Portion of 'print room' style wallpaper with panels of landscapes, floral festoons, etc, printed in white, blue, brown and grey on a yellow ground; Colour woodblock print, on paper; Provenance: Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire; English; ca. 1760. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London