'Dracula' Silk Wallpapers Prove a Feast for the Eyes
I have been ogling the sumptuous sets of NBC's new series, Dracula, almost as much as I've been ogling Jonathan Rhys Meyers every week. Featuring hand-painted silk wallpapers by Griffin and Wong, the elaborate, big-budget sets are a visual feast. Moving away from the typical dark, Gothic sets we usually associate with Vlad, this more modern take on Dracula blends design elements from several different eras — art deco, Hollywood Regency and Victorian — in his home, Carmax Manor.
The wallpapers are an international effort. Working closely with art director Jo Riddell, Griffin and Wong's Douglas Bray coordinated the effort from Vancouver, Canada. The measurements came from Hollywood. Master craftspeople hand painted the wallpapers in China, then shipped them to the show's sets in Budapest, Hungary, where Italian painters finished off the elaborate trimwork to coordinate with the silk wallpapers. The chinoiserie motifs and rich colors lighten up the menacing tone of the legend with touches of whimsy, gilt and joy. Here's a closer look at how a detail like silk wallpaper can help set the scene.
The story takes place in Victorian-era London, but the sets are in Budapest. The art director chose Griffin and Wong's Summer Palace wallpaper as a big part of the inspiration for this grand room. Incorporating colors provided by the production design team, the chinoiserie wallpaper accentuates the rich colors of the trimwork.
Hand-painted silk wallpaper is one of the greatest Chinese exports. While it all but disappeared during the cultural revolution, the trade is experiencing a renewal as the popularity of these papers spreads. The center of the industry is in Suzhou, China, where master craftspeople, members of the Suzhou Silk Workers Craftsman Guild, hand paint the silk papers. After being cured and finished, the silk is then applied onto a robust wallpaper backing of the highest commercial grade.
Lighting was a big consideration when planning the sets; Dracula has to hide his aversion to sunlight and is also bringing new electric scientific innovations to London and Carfax Manor. "A lot of the design has to do with playing with shadow and light," Bray says. "The paper is full of copper pigments and has an antiqued effect. The silk's quality and texture plays with the light in ways a printed paper cannot."
Rather than presenting the usual dark, dank Gothic Dracula castle, production designer Rob Harris and art director Jo Riddell added some whimsy to Dracula's surroundings. Elements in the silk paper, like large birds and flowers, add dashes of joy and glamour to the sets. They also help form a more dashing and glamorous Dracula character, who is posing as an American entrepreneur in this take on the story.
A team of Italian painters worked in tandem, painstakingly matching the trim colors and gilded elements on the woodwork. In addition, they painted the vignettes you see in the box trim molding, using the wallpaper as a base. "This transitions the wallpaper's patterns through the rest of the set," Bray says.
The sets' palettes dictated darker pinks, brilliant blues and emerald green in the paper to stand out against the gold.
The designers at Griffin and Wong are used to customizing their papers for clients in terms of colors and composition. ("It's OK to cut off flowers, but you don't want to cut an animal in half during placement," Bray says.) But this was a very large-scale, carefully calibrated project, much bigger than any project they had ever completed. They were provided with very precise CAD drawings of the elevations, including measurements down to the centimeter. The designs were laid out and then hand painted in China on 3-foot-wide rolls of silk. "There was no room for error, and if the director changed the dimensions, we had to redo them," Bray says.
They wound up shipping 100 rolls from China to the sets in Budapest via FedEx; Bray says following the tracking for the three-day delivery was the most stressful part of the project. "Chinese New Year was about to begin, and we got everything done just in time," he says. After the rolls were packed and shipped to Budapest, he crossed his fingers and checked on the tracking for three days straight.
This image gives you a good idea of how the gold and copper tones and the texture of the silk reflect the dramatic lighting.
Over the second-story archways you can make out another Griffin and Wong design, Baltazar. This paper combines a Renaissance evening-sky effect and a bevy of fantastic birds soaring toward the ceiling.
In this room there wasn't time to produce the rolls before shooting, so the Italian painters used stencils inspired by Griffin and Wong's Versailles silk paper. The gold leaf work combined with the crystal lights and mirrors creates a sumptuous black room that's more French palace than typical vampire castle.
Another interesting aspect of this photo is that if you look closely, you'll realize it's a set and not a room in a grand manor (look toward the top of the photo).
"It was a thrill to work on such an exciting project with film-quality sets," Bray says.
If you haven't checked it out yet, catch Dracula on NBC Fridays at 10 p.m. or online.
