Borders and Scrolls

Borders and Scrolls provides a fascinating glimpse of domestic wall painting in the historic Northeast. It looks in detail at how and why Americans in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut decorated the walls of their houses in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wallpaper was just too expensive for even well-to-do merchants and farmers, who turned to craftsmen to stencil and freehand paint the walls around them. Much of this exquisite domestic art does not survive today: houses were remodeled, some torn down; walls have been repainted, papered over, or removed. Striking examples of those that remain are found in this richly illustrated volume, which reveals intricate technical processes, schools of design, similar designs and techniques on other objects and media, and engrossing histories and stories surrounding the houses, families, and craft painters. Margaret Coffin is the author of Death in Early America: The History and Folklore of Customs and Superstitions of Early Medicine, Funerals, Burials, and Mourning and The History and Folklore of American Country Tinware, 1700-1900.