Silkscreen For Printing, Cherry Forever

Gift of one wallpaper printing screen being offered by Flavor Paper. The screen is burned with the design of Cherry Forever, the first commercially produced scratch and sniff wallpaper which was acquired by the museum in 2007. The screen is currently on view in the Immersion Room in a case dedicated to wallpaper printing tools, displayed with a woodblock and printing roller. This is a smaller version of the standard 72-80 x 36 inch screens Flavor Paper typically uses to print wallpaper. This is a full-size printing screen that could actually be used for printing the wallpaper design, just stretched on a smaller 36 x 36 inch frame to accommodate the museum’s needs. It is one of two screens that would be necessary for printing the Cherry Forever wallpaper.

The process of silk screen printing is credited to Samuel Simon of Manchester, England who was granted a patent for his process in 1907. Since its introduction screen-printing has been used for an almost endless variety of printing purposes including posters, furniture, fabrics and wallcoverings. The first wallpapers screen-printed for commercial production were introduced in 1938 and some of these early examples were included in a Cooper Union wallpaper exhibition that same year. The screen-printed designs were well received but due to the war effort most of the screen-printed wallpapers could not be released until late 1945. Screen-printing was the foremost advancement in wallpaper production during the twentieth-century. Its low startup cost and no minimum print requirement allowed studios to print small batches for niche markets.

The Wallcoverings Department contains a collection of printing tools which are used to demonstrate the production process. Included in the collection are wood blocks, printing rollers and a single silk screen. This silk screen was used to print a post-war wallpaper called Piranesi which is in the museum collection. The screen is in a very degraded condition and could not be handled or exhibited so a replacement was necessary. The Cherry Forever pattern was requested as it could accommodate a smaller frame and the wallpaper was already in the museum’s permanent collection. Having both the Cherry Forever wallpaper and printing screen in the collection would be beneficial by helping to illustrate the wallpaper production process.

Silkscreen For Printing, Cherry Forever; Designed by Michael Angelo (American, b. 1970); silkscreen in frame; L x W: 91.4 × 91.4 cm (36 × 36 in.); Gift of Flavor Paper; 2015-44-5