Ornate, hand-painted wallpapers like these were the height of luxury during the 18th century and it’s amazing that some are still extant in their original homes.

What really caught my eye were the pictures of the newly painted fascimile wallpapers at Avebury Manor.

The design was applied to the walls by stencil and then details were painstakingly painted in by hand.

The design may not strictly be historically accurate but I think the decision to feature flashes of local British flora and fauna (such as wild pansies, red admiral and peacock butterflies, great crested newts and foxes) on the wallpaper adds another neat layer of history onto this restoration project. After all, true Chinoiserie, like the original Chinese wallpapers, was always made for Western consumption and Western tastes.

You can read more about Chinoiserie and wallpaper on the Treasure Hunt blog.

Here are four of my favourites:

They don’t design ‘em like they used to.

“some trick cards of the naughty nineties took advantage of the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay vogue and other means of showing in cardboard and print the hitherto too much hidden curves of the female leg and secrets of underwear.”

and

“Many of these efforts to achieve a multipled effect of the beautiful viewed from our modern platform of good art and design, are indeed ridiculous, but some of us, who possess a more charitable attitude towards even modest attempts at creating beauty in past times and fashions many prefer the adjective, pathetic.”

it contains some impressively odd old Christmas cards:

The book ends on a forward-looking note with this lovely Saul Steinberg design:

The Stewarts were so decadent and/or lazy that they didn’t even write inside the card – all their names were printed along with their seasonal greeting. Click the picture for a bigger version – you could send it to your loved ones next year.

Here’s an adorable illustration of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, from a small bundle of sheet music I bought this summer on the Isle of Wight. Click for bigger version.

More (non-festive) sheet music sleeves coming soon.

He’s made from a piece of log that’s been split diagonally in half and painted. I think these xmas ornaments might be quite a familiar item in Germany, as I saw one in Bremen too – would any German readers care to let me know more?

This week, I’d like to share some Christmas-themed ephemera with you, starting with these old Soviet Russian greeting cards (50s to 70s) which I found at a car boot sale. They appear to be a mixture of Christmas and New Year cards, but I’m afraid I’m no expert in Russian.

That’s the wonderful Cheburashka in the final card.