Where the Present Hangs with the Past

The Henry Blosser House—a red-brick Second Empire–style mansion built in 1878 on a farm near Malta Bend, Missouri—stood neglected, vandalized, and on the precipice of demolition. The once-grand three-story, seven-bedroom home, with its bell-cast mansard roof and decorative porches, had no plumbing or heating and in 2014 had been placed on Missouri Preservation’s list of most endangered properties.

In 2016 Arthur and Carolyn Elman stepped in, with their passions for history, restoration, and decorative arts, to buy the home and hired Kansas City–based interior and architectural designer Kelee Katillac to manage its renovation.

Completed in 2018, the project met national preservation standards while reflecting the Elmans’ sensibilities and embracing an approach to historical design that combines fascination with the past and a vivid sense of who we have become as a nation. And key to the look and the purpose of the renovation was a remarkable creator of artisanal wallpaper, Adelphi Paper Hangings in Sharon Springs, New York.

In restoring the Blosser home—plus a barn—and refashioning their interiors, Katillac and her team of craftspeople visually relayed details connected to the Blosser family, the Elmans, and the emergence of American style and power, “chapter by chapter, like a book unfolding room by room,” as Katillac puts it. The ballroom contains the Elmans’ collection of Stickley Arts and Crafts furniture, while portraits of Gertrude Stein and a great-granddaughter of Sally Hemings are among the decorative elements in the “lady’s drawing room” that link Carolyn Elman, who is passionate about women’s issues, to influential women throughout history.

In the dining room, the walls are covered in a version of the 18th-century wallpaper pattern “1776,” which Katillac describes as “an allegory of the triumph of democracy over empire.” It shows a Napoleonic soldier, representing France, handing a document labeled “4 July 1776”—America’s Declaration of Independence—to a weeping Britannia. The archival pattern comes from Adelphi, which hand block printed the paper in a color that Katillac prescribed—a dazzling yellow that’s her personal update of a color found at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

Adelphi’s wallpaper patterns, which appear throughout the house, are the bright stars of the Blosser restoration. “Adelphi was always notable for their work at Mount Vernon and all the great historical houses,” Katillac says. “People who are into the craft of early decorative arts appreciate Adelphi and their fidelity to early craft technique. If you are looking for patterns of the important wallpapers of the world, you are going to go to Adelphi.”