THE PAPER STAINER.

PRINTING PRESS.

The trade of the Paper Stainer has grown to be one of considerable importance, and this is not to be wondered at when we consider how much the art of paper staining has increased the means of decorating our houses, by hanging the walls with elegant patterns printed in beautiful colours, instead of leaving them of one dull uniform hue, or a bare surface of wood and plaster.

In old times the walls of rooms were either of panelled wood, sometimes carved and polished, or were hung withtapestry made with the needle, or with woven silk, cotton, or linen, but the former was extremely costly, and the latter neither cleanly nor healthy. The trade of the Paper Stainer has to a great extent superseded both, and the interior walls of houses are now seldom formed entirely of wood, since they are intended to be covered with various qualities of paper hangings.

Front of Printing Block. Back of Wooden Block for Printing.

The mode of printing or painting a pattern on large sheets of paper has now been in use for nearly two hundred years, although, of course, improved methods are at present employed.

There are three modes of producing the pattern on paper hangings. 1st. Wooden blocks are carved with the outlines of the figures only in relief; with these the paper is printed,and the pattern is afterwards finished by hand painting with a pencil. This mode is slow and too expensive for ordinary use. 2dly. A sheet of leather, tin, or copper, is cut with holes in the required pattern, and a brush dipped in colour is worked over the sheet after it is laid upon the paper, so that the paint goes through the holes, and leaves the pattern in colour. This is called stencilling, and is only employed for very common hangings. The third process consists of carving a wood block for each of the colours used in the pattern, and printing the paper by almost exactly the same method as that employed for printing floor-cloth, an operation which has already been described.

Crutch. Ladle. Hand Brush. Spat. Paint Brushes.

The paper is printed in pieces twelve yards long. A piece is laid out on a long bench and the ground colour applied,consisting of whiting tinted with some sort of pigment and liquefied with melted size. This is laid on with large brushes. When the paper is dry it is ready to receive the print at theprinting press, where the blocks are pressed upon it by a sort of weighted arm which comes down from above the centre of the bench. There must generally be as many blocks as there are colours in the pattern.

Colour Sieve. Paint Pot. Colour Drum. Size Can.

Some paper hangings have a glossy or satin ground. To produce this a ground of satin white, properly tinted, is laid on; this ground is then rubbed with powdered Frenchchalk, and worked with a brush till a gloss is produced. Sometimes these papers are passed between heated rollers which have been engraved with a sort of pattern, and this produces a pattern without any additional colour, like that of figured or watered silk.

Flock papers are those in which part of the pattern resembles cloth. To produce this the pattern is printed, not in paint, but in size, and then the paper being passed through theflock drum, the flock (which is composed of fragments of woollen cloth) adheres to the pattern.

Drum for laying on Flock.

Striped hangings are sometimes produced by the paper being quickly passed on a roller beneath a trough, the colour in which flows through a number of parallel slits in the bottom; and occasionally various coloured stripes are obtained by dividing the trough into cells, with one cell andone slit for each colour. Some papers, in order to bear washing or cleaning, are printed with colours mixed with oil or varnish instead of size.

Paper Staining Machine.

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