Artist and decorative-arts historian David E. Berman founded Trustworth Studios in 1982. Today he reproduces designs that date from the late-18th century until the middle of the 20th century. The concentration is on the work of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, representing many designs by C.F.A. Voysey but also including a those by William Morris and others. A few early French and American designs, reproduced for specific restoration projects, also are offered.

The papers are meticulously drawn by hand and colored based on the original watercolor renderings or original sample documents. They are printed on uncoated vellum, real paper, using water-based inks. Omitted is the clay coating that gives commercial papers a glossy finish. The designs are produced at original period scale and with attention to the original texture and appearance. (Fragmentary Voysey patterns can be completed by consultation with Voysey study sketches.)

The Trustworth Studios design archive comes from Berman’s own collection of original documents as well as from private sources who’ve granted him the exclusive reproduction rights. Private clients, museums, and the entertainment industry have commissioned custom reproduction work.

From founder David Berman: My twelve years living in and restoring the extraordinary house called Trustworth (Scituate, Massachusetts) confirmed my interest in English Arts and Crafts design and set me on the path to what became Trustworth Studios. After experimenting with making furniture, lighting, hardware, and needlework, I began to concentrate, in the late 1990s, on reproducing art wallpapers.

Nothing can change the feeling of a room more than evocative wallpaper, from somber and stately to bright and joyous, playful and childlike to a romanticized vision of lost times. Wallpaper ennobles even the most mundane room.

I am above all else a preservationist; four houses have made me so. They are the early Wyckoff–Bennett House, located opposite my schoolyard in Brooklyn; the Heinsheimer summer house called Breezy Point, in Far Rockaway, New York; Petronia, the Rye, New York, home of W.G. Nichols, president of Herter Bros. fine furnishers; and, finally, my beloved Trustworth in Massachusetts, which was the home of the art educator Henry Turner Bailey. Two of these houses are gone. One survives but is in peril. Trustworth has “been so altered as to be denatured,” to borrow from famed architect John Mead Howells.

Each of these homes spoke of grace, artistry, and craftsmanship hardly possible in an increasingly insensitive and out-of-touch world. It has been my life’s work to preserve as much grace as my abilities allow. True preservation engages all five senses; good authentic wallpaper speaks to one of them.

My years at Poly Prep introduced me to the literature and art of the English Pre-Raphaelites and to William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The school’s own Dyker Heights campus, built in 1917—its buildings half-timbered and darkly wainscoted—exhibits the aesthetic of the final years of the Movement and influenced my sensibilities. I found I was more comfortable in a world that had not exchanged grace for expediency. I wanted some magic in my life.

CFA VOYSEY SOCIETY
The CFA Voysey Society is the preeminent source for information about Voysey the architect and designer. Their website includes a wealth of historical information, past, present, and ongoing scholarship pertaining to Charles Voysey and all the aspects of his work.

ARTS & CRAFTS DESIGN
Christopher Vickers is the U.K.’s premier specialist craftsman-designer of Arts and Crafts furniture and metalwork, including designs by CFA Voysey and Ernest Gimson. Chris’ work is extraordinarily researched, executed and worthy of the highest praise.