Crepe Paper, Part Deux
DENNISON MANUFACTURING COMPANY’S INTRODUCTION OF CREPE
The Dennison Manufacturing Company began in New Brunswick, Maine, in 1844. The founder of the company, Colonel Andrew Dennison, aspired to great wealth. His initial entrance into the paper product business came when he began manufacturing jewelry boxes. His son, Aaron continued the business, but it was his youngest son, Eliphalet Whorf Dennison, president of the company by the 1850s, who established the company with an exceptionally strong reputation in the paper product industry. When E.W., as he was known in the family, bought out his father to gain control of the company, its profits increased tenfold.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Dennison Company had a long established name through its high-quality paper products. This included jewelry boxes as well as its shipping tags and direction labels. Its first store opened in Chicago in 1864, and in the 1870s, stores in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia followed. The company’s association with decorative paper began 1871, when the company imported white tissue paper from England to line the jewelry boxes. The company selected this paper because it did not tarnish silver. At about the same time, European manufacturers realized that tissue paper could be “crinkled…[with] artistic effect.” Dennison imported this crepe paper from 1890 until it developed its own manufacturing capabilities in 1914.
In 1890, the Heath sisters of Buffalo, New York, demonstrated crepe in Dennison’s Boston store. Exactly what they made is unknown, but it seems likely that the sisters created lamp shades and lambrequins, draperies that hung from the tops of windows or mantels. The company displayed these items, and others from public demonstrations, in its store windows. Four years after the Boston demonstration, the Ladies’ Home Journal published a piece regarding the potential uses of crepe paper in the home. Suggestions for using the product included creative tablescapes for luncheons and lampshades for new electric lamps and candles, as well as instructions for creating window curtains. The illustrations that accompanied the article highlighted the lifestyles of upper-middle class white women at their dressing tables or in other scenes of the home.
An illustration from “The Possibilities of Crepe Paper” from the Ladies’ Home Journal, 1893.
Crepe did not invoke new concepts of decorating but, rather, promoted a new material to embellish older practices of home décor. The company soon released a how-to guide, Dennison’s Tissue Paper Entertainments, that served as an instructional manual and theatre book for children’s plays. These plays included a Christmas performance for a cast of young girls, as well as an adaptation of War and Peace for a cast of boys. This book instructed women how to use crepe in place of fabric when making children’s stage costumes. Other instructions provided directions for the creation of elaborate paper flowers, soon one of the most common types of decorative items created with crepe paper. As decorations for church gatherings, and other charitable fundraisers, crepe was easily disposable, and at a price of $.10 per roll, or $2.64 in today’s money, the material was accessible to women with modest budgets.
In an 1894 article in Ladies’ Home Journal, Josefa Keenan observed that the “possibilities of crepe” were “not fully realized.” Keenan was correct but could not have predicted the seemingly endless possibilities of crepe paper in decoration and in craft. Over the next three decades, crepe paper was the preferred domestic craft material for women’s decorations.
At the turn of the twentieth century, middle-class women’s participation in domestic art forms was motivated by complex social expectations. It was an established social practice to entertain at home in highly decorated environments. Party giving involved coordinating menus, decorations, and games. It may be true that some women experienced daily monotony with such activities; however, in this era, women also participated in these “saturated worlds” because it was a pleasurable activity through which they could express creativity. The Dennison Company played a role in this because it taught consumers how to engage with crepe paper through advertisements and instruction books.
Within the pages of women’s magazines and its own advice booklets, Dennison Manufacturing Company instructed women in the basic techniques of manipulating crepe paper and in the applications for its decorative use. The material was often a substitute for cheap fabrics like tarlatan and cheese cloth, and that tendency continued through the start of the twentieth century. In the first decade, tastemakers from popular periodicals suggested crepe paper was a suitable material to decorate homes. These projects were not different from earlier ones that involved other non-disposable materials. What was special about these new directions was that crepe was recommended only as a short-term decoration. In the context of the Progressive Era when contemporaries were concerned about the spread of illness and disease, some worried that, “crepe paper, too, affords nesting places for all sorts of creatures because it does not fit closely to the wall.” Likewise, women were instructed to throw away ephemeral party decorations made from crepe.
Conveniently, these advertisements were often located adjacent to picture-rich articles that described how to create luncheon tablescapes using crepe paper. The tables in these articles were designed for occasions ranging from children’s birthday parties and President’s Day to Valentine’s Day and wedding anniversaries. The decorations were formulaic since the visual cues for each holiday were long established. They included hearts, paper flowers, and paper chains of red, white, and blue.
Throughout 1906, Dennison purchased advertisement space in Good Housekeeping, taking full pages to illustrate the ways in which the product fit into pre-existing decorative practices. Whereas some crepe decorations were an extension of fabric, as in drapes and lampshades, these advertisements stressed a movement toward crepe paper as paper. Dennison stressed that these “eye-delights” were possible only with the purchase of their brand of crepe paper. Its variations– imperial crepe, fireproof crepe, printed crepe, crepe moss, and crepe festoons– meant that the product was scalable for different budgets and different projects, all the while easy to buy and easy to discard when the event was over.
Dennison stressed in its advertisements that any individual was capable of creating with crepe, regardless of their ability. Crepe paper was the bridge between clumsy crafts and so-called “high domestic art forms” like needle work. Advertisements contained suggested supply lists of glue and scissors and implied that crepe paper was a material accessible to women with different skill levels. This invited new consumers to take a chance on crepe. The projects that Dennison promoted were not only decorative, some were useful. Crafters made lampshades, screens, shades for candles, and outfits for dolls. Dennison encouraged consumers to purchase the “most decorative material” to enhance household accessories as wastebaskets, whisk (broom) holders, and parasols.
The availability of a low-cost material for inexperienced crafters meant that there was little for women to lose when trying the product. If their project failed, it only cost them a few cents. Compared to the losses of a failed sewing project, the stakes were lower with crepe paper.