Funky wallpaper
If wallpaper = boring in your book, then you haven't seen the quirky and unusual designs that have become available for contemporary walls. Some historians believe wallpaper was first used in ancient China, but it has certainly come a long way from the floral patterns which became popular in the 18th century.
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan
Left: Samples of wallpaper created by Virchaux & Co., Philadelphia, c. 1815.
Flavor Paper owner John Sherman offers custom designs that are hand-screened or digitally printed. Customers have included hipsters like musician Lenny Kravitz.
"That was sort of a nice jumping-off point for us," Sherman told CBS News' Rita Braver, "and kind of took things out of being your grandmother's wallpaper, to immediately being, 'We make rock star wallpaper!'"
" I had never really contemplated wallpaper as a potential product," he told Braver. "I was very anti-white walls and I loved a lot of color. And this company had really thrived in the '70s and had some very colorful, bright Mylar wallpaper that I found to be striking and hadn't seen anything like it. I missed that era! It was extremely unique and really sparked my interest. And I thought, 'I don't know anyone with wallpaper. Why not?' I hadn't seen any fun, interesting, colorful wallpaper in my life, so I decided to jump on it. And I thought, 'I know enough artists and I have enough color taste and appreciation that I can make something that people will like.' "
Left: "Featherlight" style.
"This has gone on a lot of different spaces," said Sherman, "the most terrifying being over a female lawyer's bed in San Francisco, who I would not want to face in court! But she did it in black on black, so it was very subtle."
"Oh, absolutely," he replied. "When we first showed at ICFF [the International Contemporary Furniture Fair] in 2003, there were really two or three wallpaper companies showing. And last year there were 92 companies listed as showing wallpaper!"
"Well, I think bathrooms are an excellent place to start, because they are their own little microcosm within their home," said Flavor Paper's Sherman. "So it gives you a contained space to kind of go wild and really experiment with how you feel about pushing the boundaries of your home with it in a contained scenario, instead of in the forefront of something you're gonna sleep next to every night, or in your living room.
"But I really think it's important for people. It's similar to choosing artwork. You find something you really love. You get it in the right color so that it works with your home palette, and you put something in that you really love. And you wake up every day and you say, 'I love looking at these flowers every day.' And it's just a nice point of your home."
"I was always really interested in exploring pattern in my drawings," said Turner. After moving to New York, she had a small show in which she showed wallpaper she had been doing in school, as part of her senior thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art. "A woman commissioned me to do it in her townhouse and we started exploring printed designs. And it sort of snowballed very organically."
"This came out of drawings I was doing in the studio -- little teeny tiny drawings of just piles of stuff falling into nothingness," said Turner. "And I was thinking about how funny it would be to make a wallpaper of just stuff."
"I think people like to really own their space," said Kaspr. "And I think with the level of people out there who are willing to do their own decorating, for instance, it becomes sort of an extension of their taste."
Watch Rita Braver's video report: The strange, inventive world of wallpaper
For more info:
flavorpaper.com
Flat Vernacular, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Historic New England
By CBSNews.com senior producer David Morgan