dancing zebras

Most people have seen (and swooned over) Kate Spade's ah-mazing bathroom.  For me, this is heaven!  

I'm a girl with an animal print weakness, and this wallpaper just about did me in:)  After seeing this room, I then noticed another uber-chic bathroom with the same paper, but in brown....love, love, love!

Then, a red version was in this past December's Elle Decor - what?

The paper was also used in The Royal Tannenbaums...remember, I didn't.

 Now to the interesting part, and guess what, we are going to learn something! 

Last week, I was in the doctor's office flipping through a 2007 House Beautiful (or maybe it was a Traditional Home, I can't remember) and there was an article about the history of this particular wallpaper....I'll try to make it brief.

In 1945, an Italian immigrant moved to NYC and opened a restaurant, Gino's. After sinking all his money in the operations he was left with little funds to decorate the place so he decided to go big and bold with the wallpaper and not worry much about the other details.

Gino was an avid hunter with dreams of going on an African safari so he decided to commission one of his artist friends, Franco Scalamandra, to design a wallpaper based on his dream.  They decided to design the design the paper to look like the zebras were dancing with the arrows instead of being chased be them (thankfully).

The restaurant is still in NYC and the walls are still adorned with this now iconic wallpaper.  You can read the full story from The New York Times Magazine here.   

(most images via Habitually Chic)