About Carter & Company Historic Wallpapers LLC

One of the best-kept secrets in historical wallpaper reproduction is a small, hands-on production company located in Richmond, Virginia. At Carter & Company, historical wallpapers are reproduced from documents that are sometimes little more than wallpaper fragments found in rat's nests or 19th century black and white photographs. The long and arduous process of re-creating these wallpapers requires artistic skill, a highly developed understanding of color, and infinite patience in order to duplicate the original pattern exactly as it was…in scale, color and complexity.

Carter & Company is a family-owned firm, started by Robert and Argine Carter in 1990 with the express purpose of providing this unusual but necessary service to curators and preservationists, and coincidentally to develop an active collection of historically accurate wallpapers and make them available to the restoration public. Paul Carter joined the company while still in high school and has learned every aspect of the business, technical as well as artistic, and has now taken over the general management. The designers and craftsmen employed by Carter & Company all have long-term experience in wallpaper reproduction and are equally dedicated to producing the finest product possible.

Carter & Company is committed to a tradition of accuracy in design and method. All work is done painstakingly by hand, from the master drawing through hand-cut separations, color-mixing and silk-screen printing. We do not use computers to replicate original patterns and although this necessitates a great deal of additional time and effort, the result speaks for itself. If you compare our papers to those that have been computer generated, you will immediately see a difference of night and day. As in all fine art, there are indefinable qualities that bring these works of art to life, an essence that cannot be "scanned". We believe that this is what provides the authenticity in Carter Company Historic Wallpapers.