Photo by: Sam Simpkins
Throughout the past four years, staff at the Belmont Mansion have been restoring the house’s billiard room, equipped with pieces constructed by Belmont alumni and other talented artists across the South, including a Tennessee chocolate-marble mantel by Scott Kelly (Jack C. Massey College of Business, 1989), owner of Rehorn/Kelly. 
While removing the 20th-century material from a built-in shelf, Jerry Trescott, director of architectural restoration for the Belmont Mansion, made a rare find – a hidden wallpaper. Likely installed in the 1800s, the wallpaper was originally hung sideways and upside down, leaving just one piece visible that had been placed correctly. After hiring a graphic designer to rearrange the pieces, they found that they had almost the entire pattern present, except for an 11-inch section that connected the rest.
“After coming across this unique paper, we thought, ‘How on earth are we going to reproduce it?’” said Lauren Batte, director of operations for the mansion. “It was natural to go to New Hat.”
New Hat, a Nashville-based surface design studio, was founded in 2016 by Belmont alumna Elizabeth Williams and her former partner, Kelly Diehl. The one-of-a-kind company specializes in original artwork for custom wallcoverings, interior finishes and installations. Williams hit the ground running with the replication, taking the preserved fragment and using it to fill in areas where the pattern repeat was lost.
"It's a very loud style – decorative and Baroque, this French 1860s-style motif. It's simple and beautiful,” said Williams. “This is one of the first projects we’ve done with this production method. I’ve loved it. We don't do a ton of historic reproductions, but it’s been so fun to work with this group of people.”
The paper is difficult to reproduce due to its gilt application (gold leaf finish), but thanks to Custhom, another female-owned production house in England, New Hat was able to secure the wallpaper for installation in early 2024.
“We have a specialist here that does paint analysis of architectural features,” said Executive Director Emeritus Mark Brown. “He came in and analyzed the paper itself, so we know that's the original background color, and it’s a fairly typical design from that period.”
Williams first became connected to the mansion through a project in an upper-level Belmont art class that she assisted with as an alumna where students designed wallpaper for the Belmont mansion. She graduated with a design communications degree in 2008 after transferring to Belmont halfway through her sophomore year and hasn’t slowed down since.
Throughout the last eight years, Williams’ vocation has become a balancing act — navigating her time as an entrepreneur and business owner while also nurturing her creativity and workflow as an artist.
“Naturally, I'm kind of an all-over-the-place person, so I'll just have to go with whatever the day brings. It's about trying to release control where I can — learning when to hold tightly and when to be loose.”
Recapping her Belmont experience, Williams boasted of an impactful Florence study abroad trip, influential professors within the Watkins College of Art and a senior capstone class that helped launch her into her professional journey.
"I loved being in such a creative liberal arts environment. I’m just really proud. It was a really copacetic and supportive learning environment for me. I feel like Belmont really helped train me."
Photo by: Emma Johansson
"I loved being in such a creative liberal arts environment. I’m just really proud. It was a really copacetic and supportive learning environment for me, and it made me think more deeply about the solutions and why I made certain choices," said Williams. "It's easy to make something look good, but it's not easy to have something be conceptually rich and work to solve the problem. I feel like Belmont really helped train me that way.”
When asked for advice she’d give to studying artists, she recommends that they be what she calls “prepared risk-takers” and to hone their gut instinct.
“It took me a long time to realize that you don't have to fully know what you're doing to start something that you feel compelled to do. I just kept waking up every day, coming in and trying to do the next right thing.”
As far as what’s next for New Hat, Williams says, “After eight years, you want to keep making the experience fresh and take on new challenges. I think it's always been a choice to be kind of lean, mean and flexible and never know what's going to happen – so we'll just keep the great experiment going.”