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.

An intellectual’s scrap screen

The scrap screen created by Jane Carlyle in 1849, in the drawing room at 24 Cheyne Row. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Alan Carroll’s recent mention of print rooms reminded me of the scrap screen created by Jane Carlyle at Carlyle’s House in Cheyne Row, London. Jane was the wife of the Victorian critic and historian Thomas Carlyle, but she was also a lively intellectual in her own right.

©NTPL/John Hammond

The prints on the screen seem to be mainly of famous places, famous works of art and famous people – perhaps an echo of Thomas’s interest in ‘great men’ as expressed in his later book  On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History.

The front door of 24 Cheyne Row. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

Thomas and Jane Carlyle moved to London in 1834 and settled in then unfashionable Chelsea, where they would remain for the rest of their lives.

The back dining room in a watercolour by Helen Allingham, 1881. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The Carlyles received many of the leading lights of the day at their house, including Dickens, Tennyson, Browning, Thackeray, Ruskin and Darwin.

Intellectual flowers? Detail of the wallpaper in the parlour. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The Carlyles’ marriage was often difficult, although they retained an affection for one another.

Jane Carlyle. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Thomas Carlyle was an important nineteenth-century thinker who criticised the then commonplace worship of progress, although his nihilism made him an isolated figure. Jane is regarded as one of the most witty and observant letter writers in the English language.

The house and its contents, including the Carlyles’  furniture, books, portraits and personal relics were given to the National Trust by the Carlyle’s House Memorial Trust in 1936.