Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique
A panoramic wallpaper in twenty drops that takes the viewer on Captain Cook’s voyages in the Pacific.
The panoramic wallpaper was a French speciality around 1800, with Zuber and Dufour as the major makers. Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique of around 1804–05 is based on accounts of James Cook’s and other voyages of discovery.
The paper was meant as education and entertainment. Today the images are also seen as an example of how Europe imagined other cultures; the printer’s booklet explained each scene.
Materials: Paper, block-printed in distemper
Manufacture: Printed by Joseph Dufour in Mâcon with thousands of wooden blocks; the drops were hung in numbered order round the room.
A picture continuing round the whole room with no repeat.
Numbered drops to be hung in order.
Greys (grisaille) or full colour, block-printed.