Monday 31 December 2012

Free Desktop Wallpaper

Source(google.com.pk)
Free Desktop Wallpaper Biography
n 1712, during the reign of Queen Anne, a wallpaper tax was introduced which was not abolished until 1836. By the mid-eighteenth century, Britain was the leading wallpaper manufacturer in Europe, exporting vast quantities to Europe in addition to selling on the middle-class British market. However this trade was seriously disrupted in 1755 by the Seven Years War and later the Napoleonic Wars, and by a heavy level of duty on imports to France.
In 1748 the British Ambassador to Paris decorated his salon with blue flock wallpaper, which then became very fashionable there. In the 1760s the French manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Réveillon hired designers working in silk and tapestry to produce some of the most subtle and luxurious wallpaper ever made. His sky blue wallpaper with fleurs-de-lys was used in 1783 on the first balloons by the Montgolfier brothers.[2] The landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Pillement discovered in 1763 a method to use fast colours.
Hand-blocked wallpapers like these use hand-carved blocks and by the 18th century designs include panoramic views of antique architecture, exotic landscapes and pastoral subjects, as well as repeating patterns of stylized flowers, people and animals.
In 1785 Christophe-Philippe Oberkampf had invented the first machine for printing coloured tints on sheets of wallpaper. In 1799 Louis-Nicolas Robert patented a machine to produce continuous lengths of paper, the forerunner of the Fourdrinier machine. This ability to produce continuous lengths of wallpaper now offered the prospect of novel designs and nice tints being widely displayed in drawing rooms across Europe.[3]
Wallpaper manufacturers active in England in the 18th c. included John Baptist Jackson[2] and John Sherringham.[4] Among the firms established in 18th c. America: J. F. Bumstead & Co. (Boston), William Poyntell (Philadelphia), John Rugar (New York).[2]
High-quality wallpaper made in China became available from the later part of the 17th century; this was entirely handpainted and very expensive. It can still be seen in rooms in palaces and grand houses including Nymphenburg Palace, Łazienki Palace, Chatsworth House, Temple Newsam, Lissan House, and Erddig. It was made up to 1.2 metres wide. English, French and German manufacturers imitated it, usually beginning with a printed outline which was coloured in by hand, a technique sometimes also used in later Chinese papers.

In the late 1960's and early 1970's new "vinyl" wallpaper products were introduced. Vinyl was the answer. Vinyl, an oil based product was cheap and easy to print. Typical vinyl wall coverings consist of an outer layer of vinyl laminated to a paper backing. Someone coined the phrase "strippable" which is still used today. "Strippable" wallpaper means that eventually you will be able to get it off the wall. It does not mean that the process of removing it will be easy. People began to find out that wallpaper removal was not easy which in part lead to a decline in wallpaper use.
The wallpaper industry responded by manufacturing "prepasted" wallpapers that were to be simple to install and remove. The prepasted paper usually consisted of paper with a thin layer of dried glue applied to the back. The consumer was to simply place the paper underwater causing the glue to activate then adhere to the wall. The problem is no one thought about human nature. Society had been trained for years to paste wallpaper to the wall so most people added paste to the back of the prepasted paper. Human nature compounded the problem with the theory that "A little bit of glue is good therefore a whole lot of glue is real good".
Another type of vinyl product was developed in the late 1970's. It is commonly known as commercial vinyl. Designed to be used extensively for commercial buildings to save the cost of paint and paint maintenance in high traffic areas such as corridors, high-rise buildings, commercial buildings, etc. Typical commercial vinyl is very thick (compared to paper), has no backing and was applied directly to the wall. This works great for plaster construction but no one realized what a boom to construction that gypsum wallboard would be. Gypsum wallboard or "drywall" is the common wall material today. Enter human nature; since commercial vinyl was developed for areas of high traffic and abuse by people, adhesive manufacturers made adhesive that will really stick.

The historical romance whose author has striven for accuracy and succeeded in bringing history to life is, then, potentially an extremely challenging text. This does not mean, however, that one should therefore dismiss all ‘wallpaper’ historicals as ‘bad’ literature and mere entertainment. We need to fully recognise the possibility that a work may be full of historical inaccuracies and still be a great literary work. The following defence of Shakespeare’s work could be equally appropriate if used to describe ‘wallpaper’ historical romances since it argues that the author
should not be criticised too heavily for misrepresenting historical events. His plays were works of fiction and entertainment, intended for performance in a specific arena and written according to a rigid style and structure.
Shakespeare is a good example of a writer whose depiction of history is far from reliable. One website, created by some ‘third and fourth year English majors at the University of Michigan’ is designed to show how:
Shakespeare, like many playwrights of his time, changed history to fit his artistic purposes. This website highlights those changes and their significance in the major English History Plays.
While it’s possible that some of Shakespeare’s inaccuracies are due to a lack of knowledge, some must be deliberate, and this leads scholars to ask why he would have wished to change the facts. What ‘artistic purposes’ did it serve? Here’s an example:
Like most of the history plays, many years are compressed into a short sequence of events. The rebellions that are portrayed in this play [Henry IV ] actually had years between them and were not as much of a threat to the throne as portrayed. But [...] making the atmosphere seem more tumultuous adds suspense to the major pressing question of whether or not Hal is prepared to become a strong monarch.
Wallpaper historicals may use a particular setting because it gives credibility to particular types of plot (e.g. the arranged marriage, or one which turns on the importance of virginity and family honour, and it may give the hero particular opportunities for showing his strength, chivalrous nature etc.).

Sometimes Shakespeare’s motives in making changes appear to have been as much political as artistic. He must have wished to avoid displeasing Elizabeth I and several of the English history plays deal with the period leading up to the accession of the Tudor dynasty, of which Elizabeth was a member. Wallpaper historicals enable an author to avoid engaging with potentially inflammatory topics in contemporary society. For example, a Regency hero may be depicted as a Whig without incurring the wrath of contemporary Conservative voters, since the policies of the Tory party now bear little resemblance to those of the 1800s. Writing a wallpaper historical can also enable an author to avoid engaging with the less pleasant realities of history, such as slavery and racism, thus ensuring that the society and characters depicted remain appealing to a contemporary reader. Wallpaper history can also be used to promote particular ideas about national identity. A wallpaper historical set in Scotland will probably reveal far more about the author’s ideas about Scottishness, than it will about Scotland’s history. Similarly, wallpaper historical romances featuring a hero who is a sheik or a native American will express ideas about ‘the other’, the exotic.
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper
Free Desktop Wallpaper

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