I started my year at the annual interior design fair ‘Maison et Objet’ in Paris. To see the next fashion, what is the next big thing and the new palette of colors. I have to admit that I did not see anything that blew me away as far as product design. The next colors are splashes of duck greens and blues, electric yellow with grays and purple and mauves are still dominating. I decided to look into the past and see old houses like Zuber & Cie a fabric and walls paper companies founded in 1797, 8 years after the french revolution. They have 150,000 hand carved copper plates still used today to make relief wall paper. They are old but they have adapted the old methods using more modern fabrics. also to my surprise there is no minimum order and you can ask for specific colors. They also print all the wooden block wall paper, each theme are about 15 meters, again you do not have to get the whole design. Each theme is made of about 4000 wooden blocks of all shapes and sizes. Once a year they produce 50 of the same theme and they rotate the theme every 15 years. You may have to wait 8 years to get the one you want! I believe Jackie Kennedy was a fan and had their wallpaper installed at the white house.
Close up the wall paper reminded me of paint by numbers, it is the colors that make it absolutely charming, these murals can be reproduced by a mural artist like myself and can redo the technique and feel of these murals using brushes for a lot less sweat and chunk of change. I figured an original Zuber & Cie wallpaper mural would run around $40,000 and up for a 12 x 12 feet room and you may have to wait quite a while!