Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 17, 1991                   TAG: 9103170154
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA                                LENGTH: Short

LOST COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG WALLPAPER FOUND AT AIRPORT

"I said, `Oh, ugly wallpaper,' " Karen Gardner said Friday of the package she found in a garage at Philadelphia International Airport. Gardner had spotted the USAir tag on the package and dropped it off Thursday at the USAir Club, where she is a receptionist.

On Friday, she took the package to the airline's baggage claims department, where it was opened to reveal seven missing scraps of historic wallpaper from houses in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., Virginia's Eastern Shore and Massachusetts.

"We were joking about it," she said. "We couldn't believe anyone would hold on to wallpaper that looked like that."

A Philadelphia-area paint analyst who had been studying the wallpaper scraps so they could be copied had mistakenly left the package at the airport garage after arriving from Williamsburg. Colonial Williamsburg put up a $500 reward when the package could not be found.

Gardner's sister, an employee in the baggage section, told her sister about reading a newspaper article about the missing paper.

Margaret Pritchard, curator of prints for Colonial Williamsburg, was relieved.

"I was afraid it would be in a dumpster, that someone would look at it, think it's worthless and throw it away," she said. "I'm delighted."