ABSTRACT
This chapter asks: why does wallpaper provoke such polarised responses, all of which cohere around questions of ‘taste’? Wallpaper, one of the most revealing and contested choices in decisions about interior decorating, tends to evoke strong feelings of pleasure or antipathy. Ostensibly a background, it is repeatedly foregrounded as a locus of debates about class, race and gender, as well as ideas about what is culturally ‘appropriate’. In conversation, and regarding a range of designs and styles from flock paper to William Morris and Laura Ashley, the authors explore some of the ambivalences surrounding wallpaper and address some of these questions by looking at what wallpaper means for those who use it.
