When you think about it, it’s such a shame that we use the term ‘wallpaper’ to mean not just the physical wall covering, but something bland and unnoticed in the background. There’s ‘wallpaper’ and wallpaper – and each piece of handmade wallpaper is a genuine piece of art in itself.

If you follow us on Facebook – and you do, right? – you will have seen that we recently shared a video about Marthe Armitage. She is a British wallpaper designer who has been hand-producing beautiful lino-printed wallpapers on the same equipment since the 1950s. Here’s the video again.

Marthe is inspired by the natural world but her drawings have a magical,absorbing quality about them. Some, like Marrow, are fairly straightforward representations of foliage and flowers:

Others, like Gardeners, contain figures:

Some are entire scenes, like this one (Italian Garden):

And some of them are not just scenes, but entire little worlds, like Tiger Moth:

Or Windmills:

All Marthe’s designs are available through Hamilton Weston, who are specialists in historical and bespoke wallpapers.

By coincidence, there is an article in this month’s Homes and Gardens magazine about Helen Morley, another handmade wallpaper designer who names Marthe Armitage as ‘the person who really inspires me’.

Helen has a background in botany and conservation, as well as art and all her wallpapers start of as botanically accurate drawings. The latest is the very beautiful Peony Rose:

You can see – and buy – Helen’s designs on her website Waybreads.com (it’s an old name for an Bristsh native plant). The site also has a beautifully written and amusing blog about the design and manufacture process.

All these amazing handmade wallpapers are about as far from ‘wallpaper’ as you can get – there is nothing bland or unremarkable about them. There’s just one problem. We don’t have enough walls…

We might have mentioned before how much we love House of Hackney wallpaper so we’re very excited that they have a new collection out called ‘Art Deco Menagerie’, which is made up of animal prints on striped backgrounds. There are its of animals to choose from but this one is our absolute favourite:

It’s called ‘Baleana’ and this colour way is cream and Aegean blue. This would be so gorgeous in a bathroom… (redecorating the bathroom twice in 18 months is OK, isn’t it? If the wallpaper is really lovely so it’s not like on a whim or anything?)

We also love Flamboyance, which is a flamingo pattern (this colour is off white/macaroon pink:

And Pride, which isn’t lions but ostriches (blush/off black):

There’s also Prowl, which is a cheetah pattern (clay/black)

There are also monkeys, zebras, giraffes – all in a range of colours. You can see the full range here. And House of Hackney are donating 5% of the proceeds to the Born Free Foundation, an international wildlife charity, so you can do good while your walls look good!

(Please note that all the pictures in this post are from the House of Hackney website, so they own the copyright to them – you know how we like to be clear about these things.)