Interior Appeal: Wallpaper for Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, 1887

Wallpaper
English, 1887
The Victoria & Albert Museum

This section of Nineteenth Century wallpaper was most likely made for public display and not for actual private use. This was made to commemorate the Golden Jubilee (fifty years on the throne) of Queen Victoria in 1887.
The design includes a portrait of the Queen surrounded by representations of India, Canada, Australia, and the Cape Colony (part of what is now South Africa), showing the scope of her empire.

While this paper was produced for display, it wasn’t unusual to adorn walls—especially in pubic buildings—with papers depicting historical scenes and royal anniversaries. By the time of the Golden Jubilee, critics of the decorative arts and design reformers openly spoke against pictorial patterns such as this and decried that they were evidence of bad taste and poor design.

One of the special attributes of this wallpaper is that it is “sanitary” paper--printed with oil-based colors that were not soluble in water, allowing the surface to be washable. According to the V&A, “Sanitary wallpapers with commemorative designs would probably have been used in an inn or hotel rather than in an ordinary home.”