Global stories in domestic spaces

Chinese ivory model of boat, at Osterley Park (NT771742.2). ©National Trust Collections

Osterley Park recently hosted an oral history event for local Hounslow residents. There are significant Sikh and Tamil communities living near Osterley, and the event sought to explore the connections between their heritage and the collection at Osterley, which is rich in Asian objects.

Japanese lacquer cabinet, early 18th century, on an English giltwood stand, at Osterley (NT771821) ©National Trust Collections

Participants learned about the Child family of Osterley, who were deeply involved in the trade between Britain and Asian in the 17th and 18th century. In addition people were encouraged to bring in objects that had a personal or cultural significance, and to share their thoughts and feelings about them.

Indian embroidered silk valance (NT772441) on the bed in Mrs Child’s Bedroom at Osterley. ©National Trust Images/Dennis Gilbert

Objects can appear strange and exotic, of course, and the lure of the unknown seems to have been one of the reasons behind the popularity of Asian goods in 18th-century Britain.

Massive Chinese porcelain lidded vase, mid 18th century (NT771446.1) at Osterley. ©National Trust Collections

Equally, the collection at Osterley demonstrates how people try to ‘own’ the unknown, both literally by collecting exotic objects, and symbolically by having their coats of arms put on them and by fitting them into familiar decorative schemes.

Mandarin duck from the Osterley menagery, in William Hayes’s ‘Portraits of Rare and Curious Birds and their Descriptions from the Menagery of Osterley Park’, 1794. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

Oral history events such as this one are part of the Global Stories in Domestic Spaces project, sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and masterminded by the East India Company at Home research team.

One of a set of Chinese porcelain dishes decorated with the Child coat of arms (NT771442), early 18th century with later additions, at Osterley. ©National Trust Collections

This event will also feed into the exhibition Trappings of Trade: A Domestic Story of the East India Company which will be on view at Osterley between July and November this year.

Fiction and truth

The Drawing Room at Fenton House, as redecorated by John Fowler in 1973. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

Those who have followed the debates around the Stephen Poliakoff’s recent TV series Dancing on the Edge and its sometimes convoluted (or seemingly convoluted) plot may appreciate the interiors at Fenton House, in Hampstead, north London. Fenton House was used as a location for Dancing on the Edge, and features as the house of the wealthy, charming and determinedly superficial Arthur Donaldson.

Another view of the Drawing Room. The curtain flounces were inspired by similar examples seen by John Fowler at Kasteel Duivenvoorde in the Netherlands. ©National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie

Although Fenton House was built around 1686, its neo-Georgian interiors reflect its ownership from 1936 by Katherine, Lady Binning, who left it to the National Trust on her death in 1952. She had been married to the heir of the Earl of Haddington, and Fenton House was furnished with Haddington family heirlooms as well as with the collections she had inherited from her mother, Milicent Salting, and the latter’s brother-in-law, George Salting.

The Oriental Room at Fenton House, also redecorated by John Fowler. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

As some of the furnishings were returned to the various Haddington houses after 1952, certain rooms at Fenton House were left somewhat bare. In 1973 the National Trust invited the decorator John Fowler to help refurbish the house and give it a mellow, lived-in atmosphere. Fowler aficionados will recognise the subtle multi-tone painted woodwork in several rooms, the varied upholstery fabrics and the sophisticated curtain treatments.

Mid-20th-century white King Pyramid telephone, acquired for Fenton House in 2003. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

So there is a strong element of fiction in the presentation of Fenton House, giving an added poignancy to its use as a sumptuous film set. But as Poliakoff’s work demonstrates, if fiction is successful it acquires a certain kind of truth.

Pictures and their uses

Gaspard Dughet, Landscape with a Storm. NT 771276. ©National Trust Collections, image supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation.

It has just been announced that the estate of Sir Denis Mahon is donating a painting attributed to Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675), Landscape with a Storm, to Osterley Park, where it had been on loan since 2001. Through the Art Fund the Mahon estate is also donating a further group of important Italian baroque paintings to a number of UK museums.

Sir Denis Mahon (1910-2011)

Sir Denis Mahon, CH, CBE (1910-2011) was an art historian of independent means who in the 1940s and 1950s pioneered the study of Italian 17th-century painting. He built up his own collection of Italian baroque pictures at a time when they were out of favour and relatively inexpensive.

Perhaps as a result of his fascination with ‘unfashionable’ pictures, Sir Denis was strongly opposed to the deaccessioning of art from public collections. He also campaigned for free entry to museums and to improve the effectiveness of the scheme whereby works of art can be accepted by the Government in lieu of inheritance tax. He effectively used his own collection as a juicy carrot dangled in front of the various civil servants and ministers of the day – an interestingly ‘political’ use of fine art.

Gaspard Dughet, Wooded Rocky Landscape, at Osterley Park, London, donated by Sir Denis Mahon, 1996. NT 772275 ©National Trust Collections, image supplied by the Public Catalogue Foundation.

Sir Denis had already donated another Dughet, Wooded Rocky Landscape, to Osterley in 1996. Both paintings help to recreate the lost late 18th-century picture hang at Osterley. This painting had previously been owned by the important 19th-century collectors William Graham (1818-1885), a Glasgow cotton manufacturer, and Charles Henry Mills, 1st Baron Hillingdon (1830-1898), owner of the bank Glyn, Mills & Co (which, coincidentally, took over the bank Child & Co, owned by the Child-Villiers family of Osterley, in 1924).

Dughet, a French painter born in Italy, was the brother-in-law and pupil of Nicolas Poussin, and his pictures were popular among British Grand Tourists.

Framing China

Chimney-board in the Yellow Taffeta Bedroom at Osterley Park, decorated with a Chinese picture of birds, insects, flowers and rocks surrounded by decorative floral patterns, second half 18th century, possibly originally used as wall decoration. ©National Trust Collections

When I was at Osterley Park yesterday I noticed this chimney board covered with Chinese painted paper. I was wondering if it might be a remnant of what had once been the decoration of the walls of one of the rooms.

View of the Chinese Room at Erddig, showing the Chinese pictures on paper mounted on the walls in the 1770s. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

During the third quarter of the 18th century it seems to have been popular to decorate walls with Chinese pictures on paper or sections of Chinese wallpaper, framed with paper borders or gilded fillets.

Some of the 17 Chinese paintings hung in the bedroom of the 5th Lord Leigh’s sister at Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, in 1765. They were sold from the house in 1981.

This practice is an intriguing example of Asian objects being inserted, literally and figuratively, into a western decorative framework, conceptually similar to the encasing of Asian porcelain in European ormolu mounts.

Some of the Stoneleigh Abbey pictures when they hung at Albemarle House, Virginia, from which they were sold in 2010. ©Sotheby’s

In some cases there seems to have been a practical element to this as well, as a means of making the expensive and relatively scarce ‘India paper’ cover larger expanses of wall.

The Chinese Room at Carton House, County Kildare, decorated c. 1759. Image from Lordbelmontinnorthernireland.blogspot.co.uk

Stella Tillyard, in her book Aristocrats (1994), quotes the Countess of Kildare writing from Carton House to her husband in London: ‘My dear Lord Kildare, don’t let Louisa forget the India paper, and if you see any you like buy it at once for that I have will never hold out for more than three rooms, and you know we have four to do; for I have set my heart upon that which opens into the garden being done, for ‘tis certainly now our only and best good living room.’ Perhaps Lord Kildare didn’t manage to obtain any more, as the end result was a careful composition of framed fragments.

View of the interior of a Santa Monica residence decorated by Schuyler Samperton, incorporating Chinese wallpaper panels produced by Fromental. ©Schuyler Samperton Interior Design

And this practice persists to this day, with framed sections of both antique and new Chinese wallpaper being used as decorative focal points.

A room with a blog

The breakfast Room at Osterley Park, before its recent repainting in ‘Batman grey’ and the start of the conservation project. ©National Trust Images/Mark Fiennes

Some rooms have views, other have blogs — and some have both. The Breakfast Room at Osterley now has its own blog, documenting the conservation process that aims to rediscover its original yellow colour scheme.

The Breakfast Room as the contents are being removed. © National Trust

Between 1949 and 2011 the Breakfast Room had undergone several redecorations, including a green and a yellow scheme, carried out first by the Victoria & Albert Museum and latterly by the National Trust.

James Finlay scrutinizing the evidence. © National Trust

The room was recently painted grey when it was used as one of the sets for the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises. The fees charged for the filming have now enabled Osterley to instigate a full-scale investigation into the original yellow.

A paint scrape from the dado, showing a yellow layer on top of an earlier blue one. © National Trust

In 1772 Agneta Yorke visited Osterley and described the Breakfast Room as being ‘a lemon colour with blew ornaments.’

An unpicked sample of the 20th-century wallpaper, showing different layers of paint, paper and linings. © National Trust

But descriptions of colours are notoriously subjective, and it would be ideal if we could identify physical traces of the original paint.

The discovery of a doorway which once connected the Breakfast Room to the Library Passage. © National Trust

20th-century layers have now been stripped off and paint scrapes have been taken. The various findings are now being analysed, and you will be able to follow the story on the Osterley Breakfast Room blog.

Reflections of China

The Chinese Chippendale Bedroom at Saltram, with its Chinese wallpaper, mirror paintings and ceramics. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

On Tuesday 26 June I will be taking a group on a tour of Saltram, near Plymouth, looking at the Chinese and Chinese-inspired collections in the house. The tour begins at 6.30 pm, and to book a (free) place you can call 01752 333500. It is part of Sinopticon, a programme of exhibitions and events exploring what chinoiserie means in a contemporary context.

While preparing the tour I noticed the similarities and differences between Saltram, Osterley Park, in west London, and Nostell Priory, in West Yorkshire, all houses with important eighteenth-century chinoiserie decoration.

One of the Chinese mirror paintings, in English Rococo frames and with Chinese porcelain leaping carp figurines on the mantelpiece below, in the Mirror Room at Saltram. ©National Trust Images/Rob Matheson

Saltram has a great collection of Chinese wallpapers complemented by Chinese mirror paintings, east Asian ceramics and sets of chinoiserie chairs. The Parkers of Saltram were wealthy and fashion-conscious, but they rebuilt and redecorated the house in a piecemeal manner.

Chinese mirror painting inserted into a neo-classical frame designed by Robert Adam, c. 1760, in the Yellow Taffeta Bedchamber at Osterley Park. ©National Trust Collections

The Childs of Osterley, by contrast, were among the super-rich and could really splurge on chinoiserie decoration. The decoration of Osterley included lacquer furniture, Chinese wallpaper, mirror paintings, Indian fabrics, east Asian ceramics, carved ivory objects, live exotic birds in the menagerie, a multi-room and fully furnished chinoiserie pavilion in the garden and a Chinese-style boat on the lake.

Chinoiserie pier glass by Chippendale, with matching japanned commode below, in the State Bedroom at Nostell Priory. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

The chinoiserie taste of Sir Rowland Winn, 5th Baronet, of Nostell was slightly different again, as he concentrated on commissioning several sets of beautiful chinoiserie furniture from Thomas Chippendale, set against the backdrop of Chinese wallpaper. There was a chinoiserie garden pavilion at Nostell too, but it was a relatively small, portable affair.

I find it fascinating how the different ‘ingredients’ of the chinoiserie style were combined in different quantities and configurations at these three houses in the middle of the eighteenth century. In the tour tomorrow I hope to be able to bring out the uniqueness of Saltram by contrasting it with what the other ‘Joneses’ were doing at about the same time.

The East India Company at home

Model in ivory of a Chinese pleasure barge, mid-eighteenth-century, at Osterley Park, London. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

I was talking to Dr Kate Smith yesterday about a project she is involved in called ‘The East India Company at home’. The project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and aims to place country house interiors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a wider global context.

Chinese lacquered chair with the Child coat of arms, at Osterley Park. It is part of a suite of hall furniture made for Sir Francis Child the Younger, a director of the East India Company, in the 1720s. ©National Trust/Christopher Warleigh-Lack

The Warwick University project team, led by Professor Margot Finn, will explore the routes by which Asian luxury goods ended up in the homes of the propertied classes in England, Scotland and Wales in the Georgian and early Victorian periods.

Embroidered Indian silk on an eighteenth-century bed at Osterley Park. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

The team welcomes collaboration with individuals and groups engaged in research into country houses, material culture and the history of colonialism and empire. This is an interesting attempt to incorporate ‘crowd sourcing’ into a research project – of which there have been recent examples on this blog as well, including the card-racks at Attingham and the portrait of the Chinese page at Knole.

Plate showing a Chinese duck in 'Portraits of Rare and Curious Birds and their Descriptions from the Menagery of Osterley Park' by William Hayes, 1794. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The aim is to weave together a series of case studies of places, objects and people that illuminate the way in which trade and colonialism shaped British material culture and identity. Some National Trust colleagues, including members of the team at Osterley Park, have already expressed an interest to contribute.

Chinese porcelain side plate with the Child arms, commissioned by Francis Child the Younger in the 1720s, at Osterley Park. ©National Trust/Christopher Warleigh-Lack

The project website already hosts bibliographies and other research tools, and it will gradually become a portal for research and information about the global context of the British country house.

Osterley’s library restocked

The Osterley Library before the recent rearrangement of the books. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

National Trust curators Lucy Porten and Mark Purcell have just told me about an exciting project underway at Osterley Park, west London, to revive the identity of the library there.

The collection of books at Osterley was one of its chief glories, but it was sold in 1885 to fund repairs to the fabric of the house. Other books had been brought in to dress the shelves, but they were not particularly appropriate to the room designed by Robert Adam in 1766 and did not really reflect what had been there previously.

Subtle difference: the Osterley Library with the Norris books added - and with an opened jib door. ©National Trust/Claire Reed

However, in 1991 a collection of antiquarian books was bequeathed to the National Trust on the death of Norman Norris, a slightly enigmatic Brighton book collector. Norris came from a family of collectors and antiquarians, and his book collection was largely assembled during and immediately after the second World War, when many British country house libraries were being dispersed.

Virginian Eared Owl, in a copy of William Hayes's "Portraits of Rare and Curious Birds and their Descriptions from the Menagery of Osterley Park", 1794, purchased at auction for Osterley in 2010 with the help of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund. ©NTPL/John Hammond

As Mark Purcell says in his article in The Book Collector (vol. 55, no. 4, Winter 2006), the collection includes topographical books, sixteenth-century Italian books, early novels, fine illustrated books, classical texts, books in French, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English books and a group of early library catalogues.

Fold-out illustration of Copt Hall, Essex, in Farmer's "History of ...Waltham...", 1735, with an Osterley Park bookplate and purchased at auction for Osterley in 2009. ©Sworders

Some of the books from the Norris bequest were used to restock the similarly depleted library at Ham House. The remainder have now been added to the shelves at Osterley by Lucy, Mark and House Manager Claire Reed, where they give a good impression of the kind of books that would have been there pre-1885. In addition (and as mentioned in a previous post on the Osterley library), we occasionally have the opportunity to buy back some of the books that were actually at or are associated with Osterley. 

Amazingly, it was discovered that the Norris collection includes a catalogue of the Osterley library, including listings of the books laid out on the tables and desks. This will now allow us to recreate the look of the library even more authentically.

Osterley’s cinematic double life

The east front of Osterley Park House. The 1960 film 'The Grass Is Greener' shows the house with a drive going straight to the front steps, rather than the current curved one. ©NTPL/Andrew Butler

Prolific blogger Little Augury recently posted about the 1960 Stanley Donen film The Grass Is Greener, starring Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. Osterley Park, on the western outskirts of London, was used for some of the exterior shots.

Some of the interiors at Osterley, designed by Robert Adam in the 1760s and 1770s, were also used as inspiration for the sets (as was, apparently, the Long Gallery at nearby Syon House, also by Adam).

The Entrance Hall at Osterley, copied in detail by Harbord in 'The Grass is Greener', although his blue is perhaps more 'Technicolor'. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

The story revolves around the Earl and Countess of Rhyall (Grant and Kerr), who have been forced by straightened circumstances to open their stately home to the public. The Countess is flattered by the attentions of an American oil tycoon (Mitchum), and in revenge the Earl invites his former girlfriend, an American heiress (Simmons). Cue a romantic comedy that has over time become a minor classic.

The Great Stair, another model for Harbord, although in the film the walls were painted John Fowler-style pink. NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

The sets were designed by decorator Felix Harbord. As Little Augury’s post shows, they were sometimes amazingly accurate copies of the original spaces at Osterley, while on other occasions he clearly remoulded the rooms to suit the film.

The State Bedchamber. A very similar bedroom appears in the film, although there the bed is a Technicolor dark pink and the pleated wall hangings a ditto purple. ©NTPL/Bill Batten

Harbord must have had great fun adding characteristic country house touches, such as groups of miniatures hung next to the fireplace, the ‘correct’ picture hang with the smaller paintings hung below the larger ones, and a rush firewood basket of a type still (or again) fashionable today.

The cushions on the drawing room sofa seem very ‘c. 1960′ to me, but I wonder if, even in that era, the Victoria & Albert Museum (who ran Osterley then) had quite so many barrier-ropes about the place?

We love linen

The linen cupboard at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

Selvedge, the textile magazine, is hosting an event entitled We Love Linen at historic Fenton House in Hampstead, London, on Tuesday 28 June.

The Laundry at Castle Ward, County Down. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

Professor Amanda Vickery, historian and author of Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (which was recently turned into the BBC series At Home with the Georgians) will speak about the role of household linens in Georgian England.

An eighteenth-century glass linen smoother, found in the ruins of West Mill, near Corfe Castle, Dorset. ©NTPL/Cristian Barnett

She will be followed by collector Elizabeth Baer, who will be showing a selection of antique linen, some of which will be available to purchase.

A goffering machine in the laundry at Castle Ward, County Down. This was a miniature mangle with ribbed surfaces to give linen a frilled finish. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

Before the talks begin attendees will be able to enjoy a glass of wine with strawberries and cream and to explore the charming garden at Fenton House, weather permitting.

Detail of a linen damask napkin at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, woven with a ducal coronet and the Cavendish snake crest and embroidered with 'H' for Hardwick and the date 1827. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Tickets at £35 (concessions £30) can be booked via freephone +44 (0)208 341 9721 or via the event website.