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A Short History of House Painting and Decorating The very first ‘Home Decorators’ could easily be said to be the neolithic cave painters who used their hands to daub images of hunting victories onto their walls. These paintings would use the simplest ground pigments from rocks and plants to produce vivid images which are impressive, for their time, in the detail shown. When we move into the emerging of organised societies decorating an interior space became more prominent and elaborate. The Egyptian pyramid builders would use a combination of milk mixed with pigments, ground stones and oil to paint images of their gods onto temple walls and their Pharaohs on the inside of the pyramid tombs. These tomb paintings would often depict the life of the Pharaoh and their many victories during their lifetime as well as images of the gods to ease the Pharaohs passage into the afterlife. The base ingredients of paint at the time were relatively inexpensive but producing the vibrant pigments and colours required involved grinding gems to a powder. This increased the cost of paint exponentially and made it the preserve of the rich. The next most notable use of paint is in the churches of western europe during the middle ages. The homes of the poor would remain undecorated and the fashion for the castles of the ruling classes was to be decorated with hanging tapestries. In the churches, however, there was a great desire to have grand murals depicting various religious parables and moments from the life of Jesus. These were used as a tool as much as decoration by the church because due to the illiterate nature of a congregation it would be of enormous help to a priest to be able to point at an image of hell and really let the congregation see what he was talking about. Paint at this time hadn’t moved on much beyond the technology used by the Egyptians but some refinements had been made. Pigments remained the most espensive part of the formulation and so any painting beyond a basic whitewash to protect the plaster from damp still remained the preserve of the rich. Inevitably as fashions changed so did the painters and as homes became less about protection and more a demonstration of opulence, so the need to show a persons wealth with grandly decorated quarters became ever more prominent. With political power shifting from the head of state to the upper orders many trades became more organised and painters were amongst them. The earliest records show a Painters Company in England as far back as 1283. There are few accounts from this period but there are accounts of itinerant painters travelling around villages and towns. Once they arrived they would acquire some milk from a farmer, perhaps in exchange for some labour, and would then mix that with the few pigments and other ingredients they carried with them and proceed to decorate the houses of those who could afford or simply whitewash, or limewash, the houses of those that couldn’t. In 1502 the companies of Painters and Stainers pettitioned the Lord Mayor of London for the formation of a joint Guild that could monitor and control the pay of labourers within the city and the quality of work they produced. They were soon followed by other organisations in towns and cities across Europe. The formation of the Guild made everyone within a four mile radius of the city come under their jurisdiction. They would be responsible for making sure that every painter and stainer were producing the highest quality of work and reserved the right to enter a premises and inspect the work that was being carried, even going so far as to be able to call for the paint to be stripped off and restarted if it didn’t meet the standard. They also established a system of apprenticeship whereby no individual could call themselves a painter without first having completed 7 years working for a master of the trade. This was much for the masters benefit as for the apprentice as the craft could be easily learnt within a year and for the remaining 6 years the master would benefit from free skilled labour. As more and more people moved to the towns and cities there also came a chage in peoples requirements. The increased in global trade and the emerging East India Companies meant that pigments and supplies to improve the quality of the paint were much easier to obtain. They still required a skilled hand to use however and the grinding of pigments from their raw state to the point where they could be mixed with oil was a time consuming business. There is an account of a labourer being employed for 63 days just to grind the pigments for a stately home. The rising merchant class wanted to imitate their betters with fine colours and decorations in their home but the increase in centralised living meant they also needed to protect their homes from damp and other damage so decorating a home became as much about oiling and staining the wood and walls against mould as much as making it look attractive. With the industrial revolution came major changes to the home decorating world as it did to every other industry. With the refinement of crude oil paints could now be manufactured on a larger scale and synthetic pigments meant a greater variety of colours could be produced. This meant that home decorating had finally become accessible to most of the population of the western world and taking pride in your home became a theme that continues up until now. Paint may seem like a simple wall decoration but it allowed everyone to enjoy their envrionment more and made people want to own their property rather than simply rent it from their employer as was often the case before. The advent of the post-war DIY boom move house painting from a trade skill to something everyone could do for themselves. Soon anyone could walk into a hardware shop and pickup all the paint and tools they needed to decorate their homes for a very reasonable price. As time moved on so did the populations awareness about their health and the environment which brought us the regulations about the level of toxins that are present in paint. Lead based paint, the often cheaper alternative to petro-chemical paint, was completely banned in most countries for it’s highly toxic content and modern regulations insist on a very low percentage of VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) present in paint. With the growing popularity of environmentalism and the Green movement alternatives to petro-chemical paint have emerged. These paints use natural ingredients and pigments so as to avoid any use of toxins, VOC’s or oil in their production. Initially used only on the fringe these paints are being used more and more as people become more informed on the effects of paint in the home. Peter Harling For a more detailed account of the history of the trade i would recommend "An Account of the House-Painting Trade in London between 1660 and 1850" by Patrick Baty
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