Outrage.

We lament the tragic -- and it seems, quite unnecessary -- closure of Britain's last hand-printed wallpaper manufacturer. John Perry's factory, in Islington, north London, was an extraordinary repository of knowledge, craft and old-fashioned pride. For over three centuries, the business successfully produced hand-printed wallpaper from an unparalleled archive of blocks that date from the 1700s; still pressed into service on 19th-century machinery, in surroundings that remained uncharged since the day the firm was founded in 1875.

Perry, the founder, was an entrepreneur and inventor of a new wallpaper coating and coating machine. He sold his papers to the big manufacturers of the day (Sanderson, Woolams, Scott) who used them as backgrounds for their prints. From the 1880s onwards, he was building up his own collection of blocks bought from printers put out of business by the invention of new machinery. After his death in 1941, the firm was sold to Arthur Cole, a wallpaper merchant interested in traditional hand-printing methods. He already owned a vast collection of important blocks, including ones designed by Pugin and chosen for the restoration of the Houses of Parliament carried out between 1840 and 1850. Cole's blocks were added to Perry's collection which continued to grow throughout the firm's existence.

John Perry's wallpapers decorate the walls of the Palace of Westminster and Buckingham Palace; they were used in the redecoration of Thomas Jefferson's house, Monticello in Charlottesville, USA, of the White House, and of the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. They provided the background to numerous historical dramas put on over the years by the BBC - the millions of addicts of Middlemarch were frequently gazing at John Perry wallpaper.

A visit to the factory to watch the craftmen wielding their cumbersome Heath Robinson-like machines with precision and delicacy was a poignant experience. You were shown a rickety ladder, to find yourself in a ranged row some 4000 wooden blocks ranged row upon row, one above the other, neatly labelled, and carved into every conceivable style -- Neo Gothic and Rococo, Neo Classical and Chinoiserie. Quite rightly considered precious works of art, these blocks were hidden for safekeeping during the second World War.

But this historical treasure has been dismantled by the new owners of the business, the large textile conglomerate Walker Greenbank plc. The firm was making a profit but apparently not enough of a profit. At the same time, its French equivalent, Zuber, has been declared a national monument. From English Heritage and the various conservation bodies, there has been a resounding silence. But surely it cannot be too late to find a solution. P.M.

With acknowledgement to Lucinda Lambton