Defossé’s Panorama Chinois was first hand-blocked in Paris in 1857, using an impressive 1628 woodblocks on 30 panels. It was reissued in 1913 and recolored in a cool pastel palette.

This antique set of Panorama Chinois was originally installed in the late 1940’s in a grand home on Sussex Road in the Morningside neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, owned by Harry Dwoskin. Harry’s father, Morris Dwoskin, was a master muralist and gold leaf artist and an authority on wall decoration, founding the Dwoskin, Inc. decorating company in 1914. Dwoskin, Inc. was at one point the largest wholesaler of wall coverings in the country and of the largest decorating firms in the South.

Harry Dwoskin commissioned the Sussex Road house to be designed, built, and decorated by renowned Neo-classical architect Philip T. Shutze. The paper was likely bought by Mr. Shutze specifically for the Dwoskin house on one of his European buying trips. The Dwoskins were collectors with an impressive amount of Asian art and Chinoisserie.

The Dwoskins moved to a nearby condominium in Buckhead in 1968, and the wallpaper moved with them. The dining room of the condo was retrofitted to match the original location in the mansion, with added faux windows matching the original window locations in the mansion as well.

The current owner inherited the wallpaper when she bought the condominium, and after finding Scenic Wallpaper online and learning about the rarity and value of the paper, she became its caretaker and hired us to restore the antique Scenic Wallpaper.

After cleaning the entire paper, we repainted areas of sky which had either worn away or had been repainted at some point in the paper’s history and did not match. There were also spots of mold which needed to be arrested and repainted, as well as several mismatches, tears, and missing or flaking paint which were all fixed and restored.