Pompeii No.10: Painting the Frieze Scroll

Wallpaper: A History of Styles and Trends

Wallpaper: A History of Styles and Trends  |  Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz  |  Flammarion

I decided to decorate my frieze with a scroll, and this design caught my eye as the sort of look I wanted to achieve. It's a detail from an 1808 wallpaper design by the French company Dufour. Looking at the image below, you can see that the wallpaper design accurately reflects a Pompeian temple frieze.

Pompeii   |   Coarelli   |   Riverside

This was a small temple in Pompeii, dedicated to Aesculapius (Asclepius in Greek), the god of medicine and healing. Aesculapius was a son of Apollo and carried the snake-entwined rod that remains the symbol of medicine to this day.

Pompeii   |   Coarelli   |   Riverside

Here's a scroll from a Pompeian interior mural. It comes from the salon of the House of the Painters at Work, so called because evidence suggests that the eruption of Mount Vesuvius interrupted a mural in progress.

The Grammar of Ornament   |   Owen Jones   |   Portland House

Owen Jones published The Grammar of Ornament in 1856, and included this frieze design from Pompeii. He wrote of it, "We have here the acanthus-leaf scroll forming the groundwork, on which are engrafted representations of leaves and flowers interlaced with animals, precisely similar to the remains found in the Roman baths, and which, in the time of Raphael, became the foundation of Italian ornament."

Florid Victorian Ornament   |   Karl Klimsch   |   Dover

I settled on this scroll, which is simpler and more refined than the others I've shared. It's a design by the German artist Karl Klimsch (1867-1936), a portrait painter who is widely known today for his ornamental designs, reissued by Dover Publications.

Here's the Pompeii Room as it looks today.

In my next posting, we'll take a look at that brown circle on the far right of the photo above. A good Pompeian mural wouldn't be complete without it!
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