Toile Wallpaper

Thirteen toiles, drawn in one colour on a pale ground the way the Jouy printers did it: pagodas in cobalt, stags under an oak in green on mint, a sage river map with rowers and a bridge, drummers sketched in grey on sage, swimmers cut in navy against pale water. Scenes with people and animals in them, not just flowers.

Choosing toile wallpaper

Where it works

Toile is a bedroom and dining room paper by tradition, and a downstairs loo paper by modern habit, because a small room lets people read the scenes. Pagoda Toile, cobalt on cream, and Deer Park, green on pale mint, are the classic pair and go in a bedroom with painted furniture. River Map and Village Map are for the loo or the study, hundreds of tiny figures to find. Indigo Lakeside and Blue Swimmers, silhouettes on pale blue, suit a bathroom.

Picking between the designs

Toile is usually two colours, so pick the pair. Blue on cream: Pagoda Toile, Pagoda Garden, Indigo Lakeside. Green on mint or sage: Deer Park, Stag Woodland, Sage Drummers, River Village. Navy on cream: Portrait Checkerboard, Busy Sidewalk. Pink: Palm Cottage, palms and low cottages in a dusty pink landscape with a heron and a lizard tucked in. Then the subject: pagodas and gardens for the chinoiserie end, stags and follies for the English park, maps and lakesides for the modern ones with people in them. The engraved designs, Deer Park and Stag Woodland, are the finest line and dissolve into texture at a distance; the silhouette designs are bolder and read as pattern.

Related

The pagoda toiles are also in chinoiserie wallpaper, the landscapes in scenic wallpaper, and the two-colour drawing carries over into blue wallpaper. For the history of the style and how it got its name, read What is toile.