Coverings
November was a month full of thinking about big narrative arcs, and I often returned to a classic theory/model of communication called the "ladder of abstraction.”
Specific examples occupy the lowest rung and abstract, amorphous concepts sit on the highest rung. It’s particularly useful for writers and photographers seeking to connect specific details to universal ideas.
If “design” were your starting point at the top of the ladder, the lowest rung could easily be wallpaper.
(I renamed this post because I figured that vanishingly few of you would open a newsletter with Wallpaper as the headline.)
Seems boring, but look at these colors, shapes, and forms. Wallpaper has always been serious art.
“It is with a pattern as with a fortress,” wrote British designer William Morris, “it is no stronger than its weakest point.”
I can imagine these century-old patterns of blue geometries, purple stripes, or green dashes peeking from the walls of a featured build in next month’s glossy magazine. They feel that contemporary (or timeless).
When researchers restored Emily Dickinson’s home, they found scraps of original wallpaper under more recent layers. Teams have since re-created those historical designs to add an extra layer of authenticity to the house.
Such details are subtle and atmospheric, but they create powerful connections to the artists who created them and to the humans who lived with their splendor. As I studied these archives in plain sight, I also wondered: what homes of today’s celebrities will we preserve? Taylor Swift? Beyoncé?
And which homes, wallpaper and all, will become “a vanished cast / of now-imagined names.”
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This newsletter was written on the traditional lands of the Piscataway and Nacotchtank.