Chinoiserie motifs – pagodas, figures, plants, and ornaments in a Chinese style – were very popular as fashionable décor in the 18th century. For his salon, Goethe’s father thus ordered an oilcloth wallpaper with chinoiserie – in the “Peçkin fashion on a pearl-coloured ground” – from Andreas Nothnagel, who ran the city’s best-known wallpaper factory. The young Goethe observed the production of wallpapers like this in Nothnagel’s factory with lively interest.