Papering over the cracks.

Lining paper…
What a boring subject for this blog!
Well, when I first joined the company, lining paper was as much in demand, it seemed, as white Matt!
We stocked thousands of rolls… all the grades too!
480, 600, 800 and 1000!
And that was it!
There was no 1200, 1400, 1700 or 2000.
Fibreliner? What? No, we had cotton backed lining to paper over the cracks.
Yes, paper with a criss cross scrim of cotton thread on the back!
Cross lining! That was hard work!
And Rex paste was the order of the day for the stickers.
And size: hot water size ( what an unbelievable stink! ) or cold water size.
And only 2 tub pastes: green top or red top.
Or Solvite.
Strong enough to hang a man over a shark infested pool with…?
Anyway, 480, 600, 800 cotton backed…all now gone…
Pastes? We have literally dozens of makes always in stock.
Size? BSE got rid of hot size in the 1990’s and it never came back!
So here we are all those years later and lining paper is still providing us with the proverbial silk purse to paint or paper on to.
I recently had a customer point out that a wallpaper he had to hang had see through parts in its design, the trick was to line the wall and then paint in the colour you wanted visible through this part…
And that got me thinking.
When I was young, (dark ages) one of the biggest reasons for the use of lining paper was as a base for specialist effects such as rag rolling or sponging.
When we were stripping out our Buckhurst Hill showroom to refurbish it, pulling down the wallpaper revealed a lovely rag rolled wall…all done on 800 lining by my old mate Gary Knight.
He worked here 30 years ago and taught me a lot about the trade.
We lost Gary a few weeks ago but it’s nice to know what what he did had lasted so long.
So I think my next project is going to be a recreation of that wall.
1000 lining, eggshell, scumble glaze, some colorant and a rag.
And certainty that no one else will ever have exactly what I make of it, only me.
I’ll post the finished job here later!