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Original leather wallpaper

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Permanent exhibition of our leather wallpapers

in the castle Moritzburg near Dresden

"Change of scenery" from March 23 to November 03, 2019

Here is the report of the HNA

01

leather wall coverings

The origin

Wallpapers made of leather (Peaux d'Espagne, Guadamiciles) were a popular wall ornament in the Baroque period, mostly made of thin calfskin, goat or sheepskin with painting, as well as silvered and gilded elements. They were found mainly in the dwellings of the nobility and patriciate. Leather wallpaper probably originated in Andalusia and North Africa as a Moorish invention, before they became common in Spain and France in today's Germany.

The wall curtains and wallpaper made of leather were embossed, hallmarked, gilded and artistically painted.

300 years ago, 60 of the 200 palace rooms in the Moritzburg Castle near Dresden were decorated with hallmarked, embossed and painted leather wallpapers.

The gold leather are leather, which get a metallic-golden shine through a special form of dressing. Historically, they were particularly widespread in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century, in the form of leather wallpaper for princely and upper middle-class apartments.

Although the name Goldleder suggests, its gloss is not based on the coating with gold leaf, but with silver leaf. The manufacturing process is traditionally very expensive, elaborate and requires practice as well as patience and background knowledge, because the golden shimmer arises only by the fact that evenly applied a special varnish based on various resins (whose composition was a well kept secret in Renaissance and Baroque).