Priem’s perky paper

The facade of Priem Wallpaper on Zuivelbrugstraat in Ghent

I l o v e paper. Maybe it’s a default setting for a graphic designer, but my love goes wayyy back: from paper, envelopes and stamps – as a child I wanted to become a post office employee – I moved on to larger drawing sheets in art school, onto wallpaper when I started working in home & living. And it turns out I CAN paper a wall, I am quite handy in handling long sticky rolls of decorated paper and ladders, actually.

So, when in Ghent, I visit Priem.

Priem is a wallpaper paradise, a family business, established in 1924. Ghent used to be a centre of local paper industry, but times have changed. Many wallpaper shops disappeared, but not Priem, nor the family.

Opposite this cute little shop on Zuivelbrugstraat they have a large shop in a newer building

inside Priem’s: Lilian and Marie-Hélène, still at work (Photo by Mats Van Soolingen, Visit Gent)

They have over 12.000 types of paper in the shop and are a resource for set dressers from all over Europe, and even a decorator for the White House has browsed their books.

A true paper emporium, but without the branding, no electronic payment methods, nor a webshop. No need for electronic speed, as word of mouth results in more traffic than the two sisters and brother can handle already.

Lilian confessed to a local reporter to be 74 last year. Marie-Hélène doesn’t want her age in the papers and Ivan wasn’t asked. (article in Dutch)

They have home-made designs as well as other quirky papers, and their choice of designs is rather perky. They feel a wall should be papered and not painted. Painted walls remind them of the (Second World) War, a crisis. Without wallpaper.