Wallpapers represent an important record of the art of home decorating and changing tastes, and have been collected, conserved, exhibited. documented and examined by researchers for many decades – above all on the initiative of the wallpaper manufacturers themselves. The Verein Deutsches Tapetenmuseum (Friends of the German Wallpaper Museum) has dedicated itself to the large wallpaper collection and museum in Kassel since the 1920s.

By now, the collection has grown to almost 23,000 objects and documents the development of the wallpaper industry from the early modern age to the present. Its showpieces include gold leather examples from the renaissance, baroque and rococo periods, as well as 18th century flock and linen wallpapers. Such luxurious, elaborately produced one-off pieces were the preserve of the nobility.

With the introduction of mass-printed paper wall coverings in the 18th century, a wider spectrum of society was able to afford imitations of these patterns. The collection also contains valuable objects from this period – from sheets of decorated paper to early rolls of wallpaper and the first motif wallpapers to deceptively real looking faux silk versions from the Empire and Art Nouveau periods. Particularly impressive are the hand-printed French panorama wallpapers from the 19th century.

The trend-setting examples from contemporary wallpaper collections include colourful psychedelic designer wallpapers from the 1970s, or also pastel-coloured floral pattern wallpapers from around 1950, for example.