JamesRandolphRogers&Co.
Fine Handprinted Wallpapers
James Randolph Rogers... hand made block printed historic wallpaper specialist.
JRR began working with historic wallpapers in 2007, as a Conservation Assistant in the South West of England. Two years were spent conserving, restoring and recreating historic wallpapers for palaces and stately homes across the country.
After gaining the skills needed to authentically reproduce these wallpapers, JRR moved to New York in 2011 to pursue his dream of creating his own hand printed wallpaper collection. It was there in a small apartment in Queens that he spent five years obsessively carving wallpaper blocks from pear wood and printing samples in distemper paints.
JRR now happily lives and works in the Cotswolds and is constantly developing new wallpaper reproductions to add to his collection. He continues to print and hang wallpapers on both sides of the Atlantic as well as recreating wallpapers from found fragments.
Thanks to his very niche training with a world leading expert in Historic Wallpaper Conservation and the subsequent 15 years experience in the world of high end historic wallpaper recreation, restoration and reproduction, JRR is proud to offer specialist services such as, the carving of pear wood wallpaper printing blocks, bespoke colour mixing and matching, historic wallpaper restoration and specialist installation...and of course the recreation of very niche hand made block printed Domino wallpapers.
In terms of his own collection of historic wallpaper recreations, which has taken the best part of the last 15 years...and counting, JRR produces exquisite reproductions of hand block printed Domino wallpapers using methods and materials accurate to pre 1830's Domino wallpapers. These papers can only be purchased here.
Hand carved pear wood blocks… Hand mixed distemper paints… Oar press printing…Sheets not rolls…
Hand made block printed wallpapers.
Since he began work on his own in 2011, JRR has amassed a significant collection of hand made block printed wallpapers, most created from historic designs of the Georgian/Federal era.
Early in his wallpaper career JRR made the decision to recreate these wallpapers as authentically as possible, using methods and materials accurate to pre-1830's Domino papers...and to never cut corners.
He takes great care in hand carving historic designs into pearwood, designs often taking months to complete. He hand mixes distemper paints with natural pigments offering bespoke colour schemes and colour consultation. He painstakingly hand prints these designs using traditional oar press printing techniques on to sheets of paper which overlap when hung on the wall, known as Domino wallpapers.
All wallpapers are produced with the greatest care and attention. All orders are bespoke and made to order.
JRR is currently one of very few craftsmen globally producing wallpapers in this way and is recognised for his craft on The Heritage Red List of Dying Crafts.
Historically accurate Domino wallpaper methods and materials.
JRR was trained in the art of historic wallpaper recreation by one of the worlds leading experts. His very first wallpaper recreation as a conservation assistant for Allyson McDermott required him to recreate a room in a stately home from a faded scrap of historic wallpaper.
From this fragment, JRR recreated the original pattern, hand carved the design into a pearwood block for printing before analysing the fragment to ascertain the original pigments using in original printing. These pigments were then hand mixed in rabbit skin glue to make distemper paints with which JRR grounded individual background colours onto sheets of paper before stencilling and block printing using an authentic oar press.
Once all sheets were printed and trimmed, JRR was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to hang this paper in a well-known and celebrated Jacobean Mansion in the North East of England, near Leeds.
He canvassed uneven walls before hanging the overlapping sheets to adorn the red room at Temple Newsam, where the paper hangs to this day.
The overwhelming joy and satisfaction on completion of this room was the determining factor in the future career choice of James Randolph Rogers. It was then and there that he knew what he wanted to focus on for the rest of his life...the meticulous recreation of historic wallpaper using very specialist methods and materials accurate to pre 1830's wallpapers.
JRR continues to apply this same fastidious attention to all of his block printed wallpaper commissions, from recreation to installation.
