[Illustration: PRINTING PRESS.]
The trade of the Paper Stainer has grown to be one of considerable
importance, and this is not to be wondered at when we consider how much
the art of paper staining has increased the means of decorating our
houses, by hanging the walls with elegant patterns printed in beautiful
colours, instead of leaving them of one dull uniform hue, or a bare
surface of wood and plaster.
In old times the walls of rooms were either of panelled wood, sometimes
carved and polished, or were hung with tapestry made with the needle, or
with woven silk, cotton, or linen, but the former was extremely costly,
and the latter neither cleanly nor healthy. The trade of the Paper
Stainer has to a great extent superseded both, and the interior walls of
houses are now seldom formed entirely of wood, since they are intended to
be covered with various qualities of paper hangings.
[Illustration: Front of Printing Block. Back of Wooden Block for
Printing.]
The mode of printing or painting a pattern on large sheets of paper
has now been in use for nearly two hundred years, although, of course,
improved methods are at present employed.
There are three modes of producing the pattern on paper hangings. 1st.
Wooden blocks are carved with the outlines of the figures only in relief;
with these the paper is printed, and the pattern is afterwards finished
by hand painting with a pencil. This mode is slow and too expensive for
ordinary use. 2dly. A sheet of leather, tin, or copper, is cut with holes
in the required pattern, and a brush dipped in colour is worked over the
sheet after it is laid upon the paper, so that the paint goes through the
holes, and leaves the pattern in colour. This is called stencilling, and
is only employed for very common hangings. The third process consists of
carving a wood block for each of the colours used in the pattern, and
printing the paper by almost exactly the same method as that employed for
printing floor-cloth, an operation which has already been described.
[Illustration: Crutch. Ladle. Hand Brush. Spat. Paint Brushes.]
The paper is printed in pieces twelve yards long. A piece is laid out
on a long bench and the ground colour applied, consisting of whiting
tinted with some sort of pigment and liquefied with melted size. This is
laid on with large brushes. When the paper is dry it is ready to receive
the print at the _printing press_, where the blocks are pressed upon it
by a sort of weighted arm which comes down from above the centre of the
bench. There must generally be as many blocks as there are colours in the
pattern.
[Illustration: Colour Sieve. Paint Pot. Colour Drum. Size Can.]
Some paper hangings have a glossy or satin ground. To produce this a
ground of satin white, properly tinted, is laid on; this ground is then
rubbed with powdered French chalk, and worked with a brush till a gloss
is produced. Sometimes these papers are passed between heated rollers
which have been engraved with a sort of pattern, and this produces a
pattern without any additional colour, like that of figured or watered
silk.
Flock papers are those in which part of the pattern resembles cloth. To
produce this the pattern is printed, not in paint, but in size, and then
the paper being passed through the _flock drum_, the flock (which is
composed of fragments of woollen cloth) adheres to the pattern.
[Illustration: Drum for laying on Flock.]
Striped hangings are sometimes produced by the paper being quickly passed
on a roller beneath a trough, the colour in which flows through a number
of parallel slits in the bottom; and occasionally various coloured
stripes are obtained by dividing the trough into cells, with one cell
and one slit for each colour. Some papers, in order to bear washing or
cleaning, are printed with colours mixed with oil or varnish instead of
size.
[Illustration: Paper Staining Machine.]