Restoration wallpapers, borders and frieze designs that were used in many notable historic houses and government buildings sit alongside contemporary fashion prints designed and printed in Australia for some of the country’s most iconic fashion houses. Many of the most popular and enduring design styles are represented including art nouveau, art deco, chinoiserie, as well as some true ‘Australiana’.

In 2019 The Charles Sturt Museum Memorial Trust contacted our partner, with a project to replace the original burgundy and gold dining room wallpaper at The Grange – the colonial home of explorer Captain Charles Sturt at Jetty Street, Grange, South Australia.

The brief was to match the original wallpaper as closely as possible, using our modern materials and technology to create a replica that was in keeping with the look of the heritage residence (now a museum open to the public).

Matching the shade of burgundy for the base paper was the first step in our process. It was crucial to come up with a shade that was as close as possible to the existing wallpaper and also matched well with the existing furnishing textiles in the space, particularly the existing curtains and rugs. A number of Dulux colours were selected as starting points on site at the SA property – from this our ink technician created a colour-matched formula that were used to coat a custom batch of burgundy base paper on our liquid laminator.

The final stage was to select the print colours that would be screen-printed onto the burgundy basepaper to create the pattern. From the base colour they developed a lighter burgundy ink colour for the main tapestry, and our metallic gold ink was selected for the Fleur de Lis.

Once the strike-offs were approved by the Trust and the Heritage committee, the final wallpaper order was then hand silk screen printed in their Sydney studio by screen-printers.