THE TECHNOLOGIST. [July 1, 1864. 



534 MANUFACTURE OF PAPER-HANGINGS. 



our readers with the conviction that we owe a debt of gratitude to those 

 gentlemen who have been so conspicuously instrumental in introducing 

 it. Paper-hanging in its choicest applications means a great deal more 

 than the clothing of the walls of an apartment with a figured paper. 

 Its use and particular style have their root in the history and habits of 

 civilised society. It is employed to symbolise to the eyes periods in art, 

 conventions, or manners. It is made the means of illustrating his- 

 torical epochs or great events, as we perceive in the hands of the French. 

 It should consent to architectural decoration, and require consistency 

 with itself, in the window hangings and general furniture suitable for 

 an apartment. It ranges over all conditions of the people in its appli- 

 cation. This noble art is a civiliser : it makes the homes of the poor 

 beautiful, and thus favours cleanliness, taste, order, and respect for 

 woman as the centre of domestic life. 



When we speak of the working people as having an interest in the 

 progress of this industry as well as the more affluent classes, our mean- 

 ing will be sufficiently evident when it is stated that an elegant paper- 

 hanging can be produced for a few pence, a piece of twelve yards long, 

 sufficient at a small cost to cover and embellish the walls of a humble 

 home. On the other hand, wall papers quite as ornate as those pro- 

 duced by the French can be produced here at not over half the price at 

 which the French manufacturer charges for his goods, and with ample 

 room for selection to suit the most fastidious fancy. The richer sorts of 

 paper-hangings made by the firm vary from 5s. to 12s., and in one con- 

 spicuous instance in process at present of fulfilling, an order to a dis- 

 tinguished foreigner for a piece of only nine yards long, 45s. 



The works of Messrs. VYylie and Lochhead are finely situated at 

 Whiteinch, on the banks of the Clyde, a few miles below Glasgow, and 

 are conspicuous from the deck of the steamer in passing down the river. 

 The workshops consist of two ranges of buildings parallel to each other 

 and to the course of the Clyde. Each block is upwards of 300 feet 

 long and about 50 feet wide, and one of them is two and the other three 

 storeys in height. A lofty chimney stalk iu coir <■■._ xion with the steam 

 power is a conspicuous feature of the general buildings. The numerous 

 and various working apartments are exceedingly well adapted to the 

 work carried on in them. They are very spacious, well lighted in all 

 parts, scrupulously clean, adapted to their different uses, and heated by 

 the waste steam of the engine. The several floors are accessible by 

 steam-worked hoists. About 300 workpeople, young and old, are 

 employed on the ground, and these are mostly piece workers. 



The raw material of this manufacture is the white paper as supplied 

 by the paper-maker. This arrives in large rolls of webb paper about 

 eighteen inches in diameter, hundreds of which are constantly kept in 

 stock, and many of which are always under the process of transforma- 

 tion into the final manufacture. 



