{"id":39,"date":"2020-12-02T22:12:52","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T22:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/?p=39"},"modified":"2022-09-11T22:33:37","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T22:33:37","slug":"arsenic-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/arsenic-31\/","title":{"rendered":"arsenic 31"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was the first arsenic paper design I created, I think. It’d been on my bucket list as a concept for ages. Isn’t it crazy that arsenic pigments were used on wallpapers and that those wallpapers of course made people sick? I mean, the colors and patterns can be gorgeous, but they are truly walls of death. In any case, it took me a while to find a skull to use, but once I did, it was off to the races, limping and coughing, and grateful for past public health doctors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Wallpapers made with pigments from arsenic\u2014it was a thing in the 19th century! And now you can pay tribute to your colorful goth side in these patterns but without the risk of dying from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The base pattern for this design comes from the 1874 volume compiled by R.C. Kedzie, Shadows from the walls of death: facts and inferences prefacing a book of specimens of arsenical wall papers<\/em>. The book was digitized in full by the amazing staff at the U.S. National Library of Medicine and can be viewed at http:\/\/resource.nlm.nih.gov\/0234555<\/a>. You can also read more about the book and its preservation and digitization in the blog series at https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2018\/05\/11\/facts-and-inferences-digitizing-shadows-from-the-walls-of-death-part-3\/<\/a> (links to parts 1 and 2 are at the end of this post). The skulls interposed in this pattern are my addition and are taken from J.G. Heck\u2019s 1852 Iconographic encyclopaedia of science, literature, and art<\/em>, digitized in full by the Smithsonian Libraries and available at https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/IconographicencPLATHeck\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wallpaper, fabric, and various household goods from this pattern are available for purchase at Spoonflower<\/a>; shirts and hoodies for adults and onesies for babies can be bought at Threadless<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I really intended this to be wallpaper from the start, and this mockup from Spoonflower suggests it would work pretty well as such. Will I put it up in my own home? It doesn’t quite match my aesthetic, but you never know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After chatting with some folks, I’ve added a version of this design to Threadless as adult shirts and hoodies and baby onesies. If you’ve a sweet goth babe, surely you need one of these:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Update September 11, 2022:<\/em> I ended up making the skull you see above into a repeating pattern, in case you want it as a tee<\/a> or a comforter<\/a>? To be honest, I don’t love Society 6’s cotton comforters (the fabric is very stiff and hard, to my sense) and I have not tried their all-over-tees, so I can’t vouch for those. But there’s also wrapping paper<\/a>, and surely they can’t mess that up? Anyway, I will never not love this arsenic skull inception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was the first arsenic paper design I created, I think. It’d been on my bucket list as a concept for ages. Isn’t it crazy that arsenic pigments were used on wallpapers and that those wallpapers of course made people sick? I mean, the colors and patterns can be gorgeous, but they are truly walls […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[47,9,25,8,10,39,34,7,5],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenic-wallpaper","tag-bed-linens","tag-blue","tag-fabric","tag-green","tag-grey","tag-hoodie","tag-shirt","tag-skulls","tag-wallpaper","post_format-post-format-image","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":218,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions\/218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahwerner.net\/designs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}