There is a long practiced tradition of wallpaper imitating other decorative materials: stone, wood and, most notably, textiles such as drapery and lace. Jay Moire, depicting a fine silk, is another such example.

In 1844 in his diary William Jay noted about his visit to the Palace de L’Elysees: “Some of the apartments are hung with damask, but in most the walls are papered, & I observed in one a paper precisely like the one some years since in the parlour at Bedford, an imitation of white watered silk.”

The Friends of John Jay Homestead have commissioned the reproduction of this pattern.