At the intersection of Cassavetes fans and wallpaper aficionados

March 24, 2018 6:58 PM

Recently re-watched Cassavete's 1980 film Gloria and was mesmerised by the wallpaper in Gloria's bedroom in her Bronx apartment. I can find only two poor shots of it online. Anyone recognise it or able to roughly date it? Or know an archive I could trawl through to search for it? Hope me, MeFi!
posted by trotzdem_kunst to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

FYI, your second link didn't work. It seems unlikely anybody here would be able to identify it for you, although Ask Metafilter sometimes surprises me. The good news is that if you're hellbent on reproducing this pattern it's got a simple, stylized look that wouldn't be hard for a decent artist to copy. I'd suggest looking into commissioning somebody on Deviant Art or Etsy who'd do it for cheap. Once you have the files there are plenty of places that will print wallpaper for you.

Wallpapers that are available in the stores today generally are only available for 3 years so the chances of finding the one you found in your grandmother’s attic are not good. Reproducing a paper from an original print is one of the easiest ways to recreate an old paper.

That's from the FAQ of this company, which will reproduce old paper based on an image. I'm guessing they're kind of pricey. I found them here, on a site full of wallpaper resources.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 10:49 PM on March 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

I think this is the image that was meant to be in the second link. (Hot linking problem with the original url; I found this elsewhere)
posted by taz at 1:18 AM on March 25, 2018

Googling around puts the location of Gloria's apartment at the Concourse Plaza Hotel, which was built in the 1920's. See the Wikipedia link, reference to the filming at the bottom of the entry.

According to this link:

"The hotel was first envisioned and funded by a group of prominent Bronxites who called themselves the Bronx Boosters. Its opening soiree in 1923 boasted Governor Al Smith as speaker. Soon every civic, business and religious organization in the Bronx was holding their banquets at the Plaza, a rival to its counterparts in Manhattan. The hotel's ten upper floors were filled with apartments, each with its own kitchen and interior decoration in pink and green, while the ground level hosted amenities such as a barber, hair dresser, and valet."

So it may be original to the 1920's interior design. It's unclear to me if it's wallpaper or actual painting. But at least it's a jumping off point for your research.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 8:07 AM on March 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

Looks like California poppies to my untrained eye. Try this for a jump off point.
posted by ptm at 6:04 PM on March 25, 2018

The Cooper Hewitt museum has one of the largest collections of wall coverings in the US. You could try searching through their digital collections.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 9:05 PM on March 25, 2018 [2 favorites]