Ernst Friedrich Wahlpap

Ernst Friedrich Wahlpap was born on September 12, 1770 in Saxony, the youngest of five children, to Klaus and Hilde Wahlpap. He is credited with making the greatest innovation to interior design since the development of colourfast wall paint pigments.

The Wahlpaps had been a successful milling family in the small town of Müglitzal for at least four generations. As a teenager, Wahlpap is said to have been a troublesome child, both to his parents and to his teacher, an enlightened local churchman who educated the Wahlpap children in the rudiments of literature and theology, and who is the sole source for the early life of Wahlpap.

As young as sixteen, Wahlpap took to experimenting with the properties of flour in water, and before long, he had developed a workable flour and water paste with a working time of more than an hour. Initially used to seal cracks, it was when repairing a parchment skylight that Wahlpap realised the potential of his paste as connective medium.

Cheaper than pigmented paints, and more reliable than whitewash, Wahlpap found that paper adhered to walls also provided an absorbent surface to prevent the buildup of condensation on walls, and could be replaced easily by simply applying another layer of paper. Wahlpap’s innovation was spotted by a local aristocrat, who asked Wahlpap to coat a drawing room in his Schloss in plain paper. The aristocrat then employed an artist to decorate the paper, in a shortlived decorative style known as Papierfresko. Soon afterwards, however, manufacturers began to produce rolls of decorative paper.

Wahlpap, whose rudimentary education nevertheless put him head and shoulders above other manual labourers, was able to remain very close to his invention, and personally oversaw the decoration of a whole wing of Frederick Augustus I’s palace at the age of just 35. His fame spread to England, to the extravagant regency court, where he became a favourite decorator to the fops of the English elite. It was around this time that misunderstandings led to his name becoming confused with his invention, and it is of course as 'Wallpaper' that his simple miller's name lives on to this day.