Floral Pressed Metal Panels | Wunderlite Pressed Metal Panels

The floral pattern was the single most popular design for residential ceilings in both city and country homes from its introduction in the 1880's right through to the 1940's when Wunderlich ceased stamping metal panels in their Sydney factory and moved on to producing primarily ceramic roofing tiles for the post-war boom.

This decorative feature panel was based on a 6" low relief repeating embossed design stamped into 2' wide by 6' long metal strips.

The very earliest examples were pressed into Zinc which was a cheap bye-product of the copper mines at Broken Hill. However, as corrogated iron became popular the price of Zinc rose and the cheaper option was then to use fine rolled soft Iron sheets which were embossed with the pattern in a drop hammer press and coated with a varnish to protect against corrosion.

The small repeating designs, which were called diaper patterns, were used most often to decorate the ceilings in small residences and they replaced decorated plaster ceiling patterns and cornices.

Wunderlite reproduced the floral pattern in 1980 as our first design and it remains our most popular ceiling panel for smaller ceilings. It was often installed with the small Egg and Dart Cornice which was the most popular design of cornice during the same 60 year period from 1880 to 1940, when pressed metal was the decorative feature of choice in the Australian domestic building market. In the emerging contemporary market the floral design has proved to be popular as a wall design in public buildings such as clubs and bars, and has been recently featured in the stairwells of an aluminium hulled super yacht presently under construciton in Freeport Washington.

Dimensions

600mm x 1800mm (Nominal 2` x 6`) in 0.5mm aluminium, based on a 150mm (6") square repeated pattern.