Kinkead Arts & Crafts Blended Tree & Landscape Frieze

When we discovered this beautiful tree frieze featured in a September 1904 issue of The Wall Paper News & Interior Decorator, we were quite frankly shocked to learn its early date. Sophisticated and fully realized in an Arts & Crafts style, the paper is an archetype of tree friezes that would follow and remain popular through the 1910s.

In a detail highly unusual for an American paper, this one is marked in the selvage "C.E. Kinkead, Desgr."  Originally from Pennsylvania, Charles Edwin Kinkead studied at the Boston Museum School and also in Paris before settling in New Haven, Connecticut.  He was a member of the prestigious Salmagundi Art Club in New York City, and an instructor at the New York School of Applied Design for Women leading the Wall Paper Department.  He also designed book covers, later becoming well known as a landscape painter of the Acadia region of Maine.

The William Campbell Wall Paper Company was incorporated in 1903 from the William Campbell & Company bankruptcy, making this paper a release from their first year (when they seem to have hired a number of designers and produced similarly marked papers).

The pattern width of this frieze is 20", a larger and less common size that made for greater impact and presence.  Condition is fragile with some paper cracking along the edges due to age (which only adds more character to its compelling look in our opinion).  Quantity is limited.  Order two repeats for a broader and more impactful proportion for framing.