Harlem Toile de Jouy

Harlem Toile de Jouy, 2006. Created by Sheila Bridges.
National Museum of African American History & Culture
Gift of Sheila Bridges, © Sheila Bridges

"As an African American designer living in Harlem, I have always been intrigued by traditional French toiles with their pastoral motifs from the late 1700s. After searching for many years for the perfect toile for my own home, I decided that it quite simply didn’t exist. I created Harlem Toile to lampoon some of the stereotypes commonly associated with African Americans, but ultimately to celebrate our complex history and rich culture, which has often been appropriated." — Sheila Bridges

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Interior designer Sheila Bridges created an instant classic with Harlem Toile de Jouy—a wallpaper modeled after the toile textile, with its landscape views and idyllic images of daily life. Whereas the original toile featured pastoral views and farming scenes with white subjects, Bridges creatively re-envisions such imagery to show African Americans playing basketball, dancing beside a boom box, and jumping Double Dutch, all while dressed in 18th century clothing.

Bridges, who founded her own interior design firm, Sheila Bridges Design (SBD), in 1994, initially experimented with the remixed toile for use in her home. She soon discovered that others also desired and would pay for wallpaper that was culturally representative. As Bridges explains, “I created Harlem Toile to lampoon some of the stereotypes commonly associated with African Americans, but ultimately to celebrate our complex history and rich culture, which has often been appropriated.” Her now-iconic Harlem Toile has been used for wallcoverings, furniture upholstery, bedding, plates, glassware, umbrellas, clothing, and sneakers.

Bridges first appropriated the toile motifs to amusingly illustrate Black life in Harlem, but she later created a Hudson Valley version to explore the pastoral gothic scenes of the New York region where she has a second home. In appropriating a popular form of European décor to suit the racial, cultural, and geographic contexts of her life, the interior designer has empowered others to reimagine existing design histories. Seeing Bridges Harlem Toile in yellow, the color for which her design is best known, juxtaposed against Rachelle Baker’s re-seen Yellow Room, makes for an exciting conversation about Black creative interventions into the history of decorative arts and design. With Bridges’ pioneering wallpaper as predecessor and Baker’s recent illustration as counterpoint, these refreshing works from NMAAHC’s collection suggest the value and necessity of seeing design through an African American lens.