Woman honors mother’s legacy with rare wallpaper rescue mission

By Jennifer Emert

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    HENDERSON COUNTY, North Carolina (WLOS) — The White House, the old Louisiana Governor’s Mansion and a Henderson County, North Carolina home all have one thing in common. Here’s a hint: the process dates back to the early 19th century and is made only one place in the world.

In a special President’s Day Carolina Moment, News 13 shares how one woman is honoring her mother by preserving a piece of history.

“My mother was a native of Henderson County and my great, great, great grandfather was Peter Guice,” said Sarita Sigmon. You may recognize the name from the Peter Guice Memorial Bridge. At 225 feet tall, it’s the third-highest bridge carrying an interstate highway in the eastern US. Guice built the first bridge over the Green River Gorge in 1820 made of wood.

Both family and history matter to Sigmon and her granddaughter Farrah.

“We’ve had many family gatherings,” Sigmon said. “Christmases in this room were always full of joy and laughter and food.”

“It’s just really special to me, in that there was always something to do and like people here,” said Farrah.

It made a decision reached three years ago complicated.

“The one thing my mother said to me before she passed was, ‘if you can’t keep the property or for some reason, you decide to sell the property, will you please find someone who will love it?'” explained Sigmon.

Unable to keep the home her mother lived in for 30 years, last year Sigmon found the perfect family.

“They love it,” she said. “They’ve been very gracious to us and they’re going to make this home their home.”

This has been impacting another of her mother’s wishes because the family will need to remove some walls to accomplish their goals.

“My mother was on a mission to preserve this painting, and now she carried that, she handed that dedication and mission down to me,” said Sigmon.

The home’s original owner, Margaret Bailey Bland, the daughter of the family who built the renowned Cedars, installed the wallpaper after former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961 put the same French wallpaper pattern salvaged from a historic Massachusetts home in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

“You’ll often see presidents speaking at a podium and you’ll see the painting behind,” said Sigmon.

The Zuber scenic wallpaper is unique, showing images of the New World including New York’s harbor to the Natural Bridge in Virginia to Niagara Falls. Local artist Barbara Nussdorfer-Eblen explained the wallpaper is created using carved wooden stamps.

“The first step is this background, which is this beautiful, faded kind of celadon green blue, and then applied with these big broad brushes, you can see that there,” said Nussdorfer-Eblen.

“There are 223 colors. It’s 1,690 blocks so every little piece that’s a variation of shape is its own block and so the blocks aren’t really that big so they can manage applying the color to them easily with a big brush,” said Nussdorfer-Eblen.

The blocks to make the images called “The views of North America” or “Les Vues D’Amerique du Nord” take up several rows of shelves inside the factory in Rixheim, France. The Zuber factory still uses the original woodblocks engraved between 1797 and 1830 to create its wallpapers, fabric and leather.

“I often kind of jokingly say that mother was just carrying on Jackie’s tradition, that she believed in preserving history as well,” said Sigmon.

With the new family’s blessing, Sigmon’s having the wallpaper carefully removed.

“We started doing research on this paper and the more we researched the more we found out the history and just the value of what this particular painting is,” said Sigmon.

The wallpaper has been resold for thousands at auctions, while critics have raised issues with some of the images depicted and elsewhere called for its removal.

It won’t fit in the family’s home, so Sigmon’s hoping someone finds value in it, like her mother.

“It doesn’t have to be locally, but I would like to know that it’s going to be cared for and continue in years to come,” she said.

Sigmon has reached out to a few local historians without luck, but said she feels certain there’s a new home for the wallpaper. If not, she plans to store it until she does.

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