Antique Wallpaper Indentification

[argyllshiregirl]

Hello,

This is not the best photo as I took it as the machines were tearing the structure down! The building was built in the late 1860s in southern Ontario, Canada. It was brick and was originally a tea and dry goods store with dwelling space on the second floor.

I am interested in the briefly exposed piece of wallpaper. It is light green in colour with a simple repeated design of perhaps sailboats or maybe a little clump of trees?? What era might this wallpaper have come from? I am writing a local history piece about the early days of the interior design industry.

Thank you!

Mary

[Handypandy]

My guess would be 1940s...... something like this:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/8f/8c/9f/8f8c9f51933baad8e961133c6c6dc2b7.jpg

[hepburn]

It doesn't look as if there's been lots of different wallpapers pasted over time..

[Crumblie]

Green wallpaper in the victorian era could contain arsenic so if it was earlier than the 1940s it could be just as well that the building was being torn down.

[still_looking]

Assuming you have a better view of the design than the photo shows then it might be worth going through old mail order catalogues, no idea whose were most common in Ontario though. These can often be found on sites like archive.org .

Examples here from a Montgomery Ward catalogue:
https://www.vintageinn.ca/2020/11/vintage-wallpaper-ideas-from-a-1940-montgomery-ward-catalog/

S_L

[dobfarm]

Looking at the woodwork with what looks like a false wall over the one strip of continuous pattern wallpaper covered wall, some new looking wallpaper below, above the wood looks aged with smokey discoloured wallpaper (same pattern piece of wallpapper), that pipe work which looks fairly modern that was used as a chimney through lofts or attacks from tank cupboards, where gas immersion heaters fitted in copper tanks and when coal fire back fire water heated tanks with smokey chimneys where outlawed with smokeless zones were introduced in the mid 1960's.

Thus that wallpaper looks late 1940's/50's