My daughter gave us two lamps she found at a yard sale (if you can call it that) in Manhattan that had been made from what we think are printing rolls for making wallpaper. They might work for fabric.

The one above is 5″ in diameter and 18 1/2″ long.

They are cylinders made of wood with an outline drawing of the image for the colors. I cannot tell how the drawing is applied, but it seems that this would need to be quite accuracte for each roll depending on how many colors are being used. I’ve noticed that many older wallpapers are at best only close when it comes to registration and the design works around the need.

There is a thin metal line that is driven into the wood that essentially forms the outline. When there is a solid area it is filled with some kind of mortar or grout. The mortar works really well as there isn’t any area broken out over the whole piece. Below is the other roll which is 6 1/4″ x 20 1/4″.

A few questions we have are “How do they drive that outline in and get it so evenly “type high”? Maybe it is ground.

What are those dots? Some are circles with dots inside and some are solid which may indicate ones that are filled in and maybe others that are reversed out.

What is the use of those nails you can see in the middle photo in the upper right? Do they represent some kind of registration system?

What kind of press are they printed on?

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