Remixed from a drawing in 'The March of Loyalty', Letitia MacClintock, 1884.
Source Firkin
A seamless pattern based on a square tile that can be retrieved in Inkscape by selecting the rectangle and using shift-alt-i.
Source Firkin
Super simple but very nice indeed. Gray with vertical stripes.
Source Merrin Macleod
From a drawing in 'In an Enchanted Island', William Mallock, 1892.
Source Firkin
Remixed from a drawing in 'A Girl in Ten Thousand', Elizabeth Meade, 1896.
Source Firkin
A seamless background drawn in Paint.net and vectorised with Vector Magic. The starting point was a photograph of drinking straws from Pixabay.
Source Firkin
A background formed from an image of an old tile on the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art website. To get the base tile, select the rectangle in Inkscape and use shift-alt-i.
Source Firkin
A simple example on using clones. You can generate a nice base for a pattern fill quickly with it.
Source Lazur URH
Remixed from a design seen in 'Burghley. The Life of William Cecil', William Charlton, 1857. The tile this is based on can be had by selecting the rectangle in Inkscape and using shift+alt+i.
Source Firkin
Remixed from an image on Pixabay, the original having been uploaded by darkmoon1968.
Source Firkin
Derived from a PNG that was uploaded to Pixabay by nutkitten
Source Firkin
Light gray grunge wall with a nice texture overlay.
Source Adam Anlauf
From a drawing in 'Friend or Fortune? The story of a strange year', Robert Overton, 1897.
Source Firkin
From a drawing in 'Art Embroidery', M.S. Lockwood and E. Glaister, 1878.
Source Firkin
An abstract pale yellow paper-like background with stains colored in yellow and green.
Source V. Hartikainen
Very dark pattern with some noise and 45-degree lines.
Source Stefan Aleksić
From a drawing in 'Cowdray: the history of a great English House', Julia Roundell, 1884.
Source Firkin