PRESSING STICK, wood, 19th century.

Printing stick for wallpaper.
Dimensions 44 x 48 cm.

Before the breakthrough of the adhesive printing machine, all wallpapers were printed by hand with wooden printing blocks and you can sense joints in the pattern between the reports (the length of the pattern itself). The print on such wallpaper is rather rough because it is not possible to cut too fine pattern details in wood. Sometimes it was possible to print more distinct patterns with the help of pins and strips in brass, which were hammered into the printing block, but often these are single pattern details. Even the oldest machine-printed wallpapers usually have a coarser pattern because the rollers were often made of wood. The wallpaper of the late 19th century, on the other hand, almost always has a very distinct pattern character.