If these walls could talk... A few weeks ago, the editor of Curbed Chicago showed us the listing for a Colonial Revival mansion that had just come on the market in Illinois. The thing we immediately noticed in the listing photos was the Zuber wallpaper in the entry.
What's Zuber wallpaper, the editor asked" It?s woodblock-printed paper, we explained, and is famous for its panoramic scenes, and has been produced in France for centuries. But, truth be told, we didn?t know much more about panoramic woodblock-printed wallpaper, which we always considered in conjunction with hand-painted Chinese wallpaper, popular for its delicate scenes of flora and fauna. Where did these panoramic designs come from?and is it appropriate or anachronistic to think of them in conjunction with Chinese paper offerings" What we ended up?ahem?uncovering was far more than could fit into a single piece, so we?re turning our discoveries into a three-part wallpaper extravaganza. Today" We?re talking history.

Courtesy of Zillow.

The foyer of the mansion in Illinois with panoramic wallpaper.
Designs printed on paper first started as a cheaper substitute for the woven tapestries and embroidered wall-hangings of the 15th and 16th centuries, but the concept of modern wallpaper didn?t really emerge until a little over a century later. "Wallpaper wasn?t coming about until roughly 1650," says wallpaper historian Robert Kelly. "The real watershed moment in...