The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bridges’ Harlem Toile features a tableau of possibility, belonging.
Inever had the slightest interest in wallpaper. Then Harlem Toile came along. The wallpaper, which was created by celebrated interior designer Sheila Bridges in 2006, features beautiful drawings of African Americans in the lush historical settings that rarely featured them: a couple in 18th-century dress dance under a structure that recalls the Arc de Triomphe to the tunes of a boombox that rests playfully on the grass; as women in ballgowns sit under a majestic tree, one combs another’s hair while yet another woman holds up a fairy-talelike mirror; a courting couple in fashion that now brings to mind the popular series “Bridgerton” feast on a picnic.
For a Black girl who grew up loving Jane Austen and Toni Morrison with equal aplomb, Harlem Toile was more than wallpaper. It was a tableau of possibility and belonging.
Traditional toile de Jouy (the term translates to “cloth from Jouy,” a suburb outside Paris where it was originally produced) has been popular since the 1700s. Beloved by Marie Antoinette and Joséphine Bonaparte, the fabric typically featured romantic pastoral scenes. Storytelling on fabric was intrinsic to the charm of toile.
Although toile de Jouy has seen hundreds of cheaper knockoffs in recent years, the original was always a luxury good. Harlem Toile de Jouy wallpaper, similarly, is not cheap. I had to save for the handcrafted version ($350 a roll) that was installed on my kitchen wall in fall 2021. But in summer 2020, when the world was still in the early days of the pandemic and the deaths of George Floyd and other Black people wore heavy on the nation, I struggled with finding any sense of safety, so I bought a 28-by-31-inch Harlem Toile wall decal for $85 to serve as my Zoom background as I worked remotely from my bedroom. Every time I looked at the panel, it was a reminder that my ancestors had my back. We had survived the unsurvivable time and time again; cultivating hope wasn’t frivolous, it was essential.
To truly understand the power of Harlem Toile, said Martha S. Jones, a public historian and professor at Johns Hopkins University, you have to go back 200 years to Bridges’ hometown, Philadelphia, where in the 1820s there was a young white illustrator named Edward Clay. After studying in Paris and London, Clay was shocked to discover a thriving free Black culture when he returned. Well-dressed Black people strolled in the parks and frequented department stores. It was, Jones said, this kind of new sociability. Clay was unsettled by this and created panels of etchings in response. As Jones explained, “The result is a series titled ‘Life in Philadelphia,’ a very cruel, very ugly series of caricatures of Black middle-class figures in Philadel
phia in this period. They are adopted, borrowed, circulated widely.”
What happened next is emblematic of how something as simple as wallpaper becomes more than decoration. A French painter, Jean Julien Deltil, borrowed from Clay’s “Life in Philadelphia” to create a series of images with titles like “Vues d’amérique du Nord” and “Bay of New York” that featured Black middle-class Americans, but not in caricature. Deltil’s designs were made into wallpaper in 1834 by the French firm Zuber & Cie.
Jones herself has a panel of the Zuber wallpaper installed in her home. As a historian, she said, the emotional tug of living with the figures of Black Americans that Deltil drew with grace and humanity are as important to her as family portraits and mementos.
“The characters on my wallpaper are people I speak to every day,” she said. “I greet them. I live with them, and they stand in for the folks we might know of. And the many we don’t know enough about. And in that way, they’re also precious.”
‘Design one for yourself ’
In 2005, in her work as an interior designer, Bridges had used toile de Jouy many times in clients’ homes, but she could never find a design that resonated with her.
“They were beautiful, but I just didn’t want them on my walls, and so I decided, like most designers, why not just design one for yourself ?”
The scenes in Harlem Toile draw both from Bridges’ life in the New York City neighborhood where she has lived for nearly 30 years and her childhood growing up in a middle-class African American community in Philadelphia.
“The basketball scene was actually inspired by a very famous moment between Kareem Abdul-jabbar and Wilt Chamberlain. Wilt Chamberlain is from Philadelphia, and it’s just this famous block and skyhook. That drawing was based on a photograph from this book I had.”
One of the things Harlem Toile does in drawing on traditional 18th-century French design is reference the history of elite Black American communities that are currently featured in popular culture, from a reboot series like “Bel-air” to shows like “The Gilded Age” and “Bridgerton.”
Growing up in Atlanta, Latanya Richardson Jackson, the Tony-nominated actor who is married to Samuel L. Jackson, was inspired by the history of Black wealth that surrounded her.
“I saw fabulous homes with beautiful fabrics,” Jackson said. “That’s the narrative that I have always wanted to put forward, which brings us back to why I couldn’t put the original toile de Jouy in my house. So I love the fact that Sheila saw something else.” Jackson has Harlem Toile wallpaper in three rooms in her Los Angeles home and has used the fabric to upholster furniture as well.
The Wedgwood collaboration
Bridges recently launched a collection with Wedgwood, the 263-year-old British pottery company known for its fine porcelain. Bridges had long been familiar with the company because her mother collected Wedgwood Jasperware: “We had a cabinet on the sun porch of our house in Philadelphia. All the shelves were filled with Wedgwood.”
One of Bridges’ most cherished items is a Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion that her mother gave her; she turned it into a necklace that she still wears all the time. The ceramic medallion was created in 1787 by Josiah Wedgwood, who designed a cameo of a Black man kneeling, his hands clasped in a prayerful, pleading pose. The text around the figure reads, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Wedgwood belonged to the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and created the medallion as a seal for the organization, Holland Cotter, co-chief art critic at The New York Times, recently wrote.
“I love the fact that he didn’t have to do this, but it was important to him,” Bridges said. “He used his artistry, his knowledge and ultimately his privilege in a way that was meaningful.”
Because of Josiah Wedgwood and because of her mother, Bridges said, “Wedgwood was the collaboration that I wanted more than any other collaboration.” The Harlem Toile Wedgwood collection features a bevy of details that you don’t normally see in fine porcelain collections. There’s a basketball on the inside of the teacup, for instance. And it’s likely that this is the first time a boombox has been rendered on bone china.
For Bridges, the collaboration with Wedgwood is a big win in a career dedicated to both beauty and inclusion.
“Only 2% of interior designers in the U.S. are Black,” she noted. “It’s a $17.5 billion industry. Imagine what it was like almost 30 years ago when I started.”