China returns to Saltram

Isaac Julien, 'Hotel (Ten Thousand Waves)', 2010, Endura Ultra pohotograph, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London

Between 28 April and 7 July 2012 Saltram is co-hosting an exhibition of contemporary art exploring the cultural influence of China on the west. Saltram is of course already home to a significant historic collection of Chinese wallpaper, which I have featured before.

Image of a temple in a mountainous landscape on a Japanese lacquer cabinet, c. 1630-1650, at Ham House, Surrey. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

The exhibition has been curated by Eliza Gluckman and is part of the National Trust-sponsored Sinopticon project which explores the interface between chinoiserie – the western use and imitation of Chinese art and design – and contemporary art.

Meekyoung Shin, 'Translation', 2010, facsimiles of Chinese porcelain vessels produced in soap, copyright the artist, courtesy of Haunch of Venison, London (installation view at Haunch of Venison)

Other venues hosting this event are Plymouth Arts Centre, Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery and Plymouth College of Art.

Baroque-style display of East Asian porcelain at Beningbrough Hall, North Yorkshire. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

Artists include Suki Chan (UK), Gayle Chong Kwan (UK), Stephanie Douet (UK), Christian Jankowski (Germany), Isaac Julien (UK), WESSIELING (UK), Grayson Perry (UK), Ed Pien (Canada), Meekyoung Shin (South Korea), Karen Tam (Canada), Erika Tan (UK), Tsang Kin-wah (HK/China) and Laura White (UK).

WESSIELING, 'Fashion Chess', 2011, photo by Nigel Trebbeck, copyright the artist

The exhibition demonstrates how chinoiserie is still a relevant concept in view of the persisten cultural barriers between ‘the west’ and China, which can lead alternately to fascination and mistrust, inspiration and misinterpretation.

Model of a Chinese pagoda created by Betty Radcliffe, 1767, at Erddig, Wrexham. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

The works on show engage with these barriers in different ways and explore the nature of cultural identity.

Karen Tam, 'Terra dos Chînos', 2011-2012, mixed media, soap, papier-mâché, aluminium foil, courtesy the artist.

Seeing this exhibition in the context of the National Trust’s historic collections, I find it fascinating to realise how globalised the world already was in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with international trade carrying East Asian objects into the most personal and private areas of European homes.

Corner cupboard with a mixture of East Asian and English ceramics, at Hill Top, Cumbria. ©National Trust Images/Geoffrey Frosh

Equally, that sense of wonder in the face of a different culture and that longing for what is distant is still very much with us today.

The Chinese wallpapers at Saltram

Chinese picture used as wallpaper in the Study at Saltram. ©NTPL/John Hammond

After the recent flurry of posts about Chinese wallpapers and related subjects, both on this blog and on Style Court and Little Augury, I wanted to show a few of the intriguing eighteenth-century papers that have inspired the ones being created today by Fromental and De Gournay.

The Study, showing the astonishingly varied arrangement of papers used to decorate the walls. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Saltram, in Devon, was rebuilt and redecorated in the 1740s for John Parker and his heiress wife, Lady Catherine, daughter of the 1st Earl Poulett. They introduced high-quality plasterwork and also a variety of Chinese wallpapers.

A garden scene, in the Study. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The walls of the Study have a collection of sections of wallpaper and decorative pictures on paper of widely differing sizes and subjects divided and framed by (European) key-fret strips. It has the phantasmagoric feeling of a room-size picture book.

The Chinese Chippendale Bedroom. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The Chinese Chippendale bedroom has a panoramic ‘wallpaper’, which in fact is a painted silk hanging showing people engaged in various occupations and industries. Mid-eighteenth-century Chinese paintings on glass hang on top of the wallpaper, and the chairs and hanging shelves with chinoiserie fretwork further enhance the exotic feeling of the room.

The Chinese Dressing Room. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The wallpaper in the Chinese Dressing Room, painted on mulberry paper, is probably the oldest at Saltram, dating from the early eighteenth century, and depicts elegant people in a garden setting.

A number of the panels are repeated, and various birds and other elements have been cut out from other papers and pasted in, showing how the decorative value of the pattern was valued more than its realistic content.

One of the mirror paintings in the Mirror Room, with the panoramic paper behind. NTPL/Rob Matheson

The paper in the so-called Mirror Room was moved here in recent times from a room not on view to the public. It is made up of sections of a panoramic wallpaper, again augmented by glass paintings, fretwork furniture, lacquer and porcelain.

Many grand houses would have had more than one Chinese wallpaper in the past, but Saltram is one of the few where so many of them survive.

Panned out well

©National Trust/Robert Thrift

The other day I featured the Chinese porcelain bowl at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire, that was used to serve punch. The vessels employed in the kitchen at Nostell are also rather impressive, although in a more robust, down to earth way.

©National Trust/Robert Thrift

In 2007 a group of copper pots and pans from the kitchen at Nostell was accepted by the Government in lieu of inheritance tax and allocated to the National Trust. This so-called batterie de cuisine can tell us all sorts of things about country house cooking practices in the nineteenth century.

©National Trust/Robert Thrift

The pans are engraved with the monogram of the Winn family, Barons St Oswald. Nostell was transferred to the National Trust in 1953, but it is still the home of the present Lord and Lady St Oswald.

©NTPL/John Hammond

Other historic houses have similar sets of implements, although each kitchen is different. The Great Kitchen at Saltram, in Devon, was built in the 1770s, but the range was added in 1885.

©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The kitchen at Petworth House, West Sussex, includes a warming cupboard with nifty sliding doors. 

©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

There is also a high-tech steam bain-marie at Petworth, made by Jeakes & Co. in about 1870. I could easily picture this in a Japanese steampunk anime film.

Regilding the lily

One of a set of torcheres bearing candelabra in the Great Room at Saltram. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The current issue of ABC Bulletin features an article by Sue Baumbach about the conservation of a group of four torcheres at Saltram, in Devon. I have just discovered that we have some images of them being worked on, so I thought I would show those here.

The torcheres being treated at Tankerdale. ©NTPL/John Hammond

As Sue relates, the candelabra were ordered by Theresa Parker from Boulton & Fothergill in 1771 for the Great Room at Saltram. They have central urns made of the rare mineral Blue John, or Derbyshire fluorspar.

Working on one of the ram's heads. ©NTPL/John Hammond

There is no record of the purchase of the tocheres. They may have been designed by Robert Adam together with the rest of the decoration of the room.

However, it is also possible that they were the quartet of similar-sounding torcheres that were sold in the house sale of a property in Portman Square in London in 1778. These were bought by a Mr Sturt, whose name also appears in the Saltram accounts at around that time, but the evidence is not conclusive.

Injecting the woodworm holes. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The torcheres had become unstable due to previous pest infestations, and they have recently been treated at the workshop of Tankerdale Ltd.

Re-gilding the base of one of the torcheres. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Analysis of the gilding undertaken by Catherine Hassall showed that the torcheres had only been re-gilded once before, in the late nineteenth century.

The 1897 inscription on the inside of one of the torcheres, with the contemporary business directory that lists the Harris firm. ©NTPL/John Hammond

This probably relates to the inscription found within one of the torcheres, which reads ’Bellamy, Apprentice, H & Sons, April 1897. Repard [sic] by James Street, April 1897. From Harris & Sons, George Street.’

A contemporary business directory records that Harris & Sons was a Plymouth company of ‘art decorators, house painters, gilders, picture dealers, artists’ colourmen and stationers’.

One of the torcheres with its candelabra, in a corner of the Great Room. Since this photograph was taken, the torcheres have been moved to more prominent positions in the room, in line with Robert Adam's original arrangement. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The 1897 re-gilding was probably part of the redecorations carried out by Albert Edmond Parker, 3rd Earl of Morley, who had married an heiress and moved back to Saltram after the house had been let to tenants for a number of years.

Angelica Kauffman: Celebrity artist

Self-portrait by Angelica Kauffman at Saltram, Devon. Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and transferred to the National Trust in 1957. ©NTPL/John Hammond

I previously featured the Kauffman portrait that we manage to re-acquire for Oxburgh Hall, but in other National Trust properties we also have a few works by this artist, which illustrate her remarkable career.

Angelica Kauffman, The Artist Hesitating Between the Arts of Music and Painting, 1791 or 1794, at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire. Acquired with the help of the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2002. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Angelica Kauffman was born in Switzerland in 1741, and as she grew up she showed talent for both music and art. A priest advised her that art would be more rewarding in the long term. Kauffman later dramatised this ‘judgement of Hercules’ decision in an image of herself hesitating between the blandishments of Music and the rocky road of Painting.

Portrait of Sir Joshua Reynolds by Kauffman, 1767, at Saltram, Devon. Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and transferred to the National Trust in 1957. ©NTPL/Rob Matheson

Kauffman’s father took her to Italy where she studied drawing and painting and visited important collections. She was fluent in several languages and was fêted as a female prodigy. In 1766 Lady Wentworth, the wife of the British ambassador to Venice, took her to London, where she befriended Joshua Reynolds who enthusiastically promoted her career.

Venus Directing Aeneas and Achates to Carthage, by Angelica Kauffman. Exhbited at the Royal Academy in 1769. Accepted in lieu of tax by H.M. Government and transferred to the National Trust in 1957. ©NTPL/John Hammond

Kauffman was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy. She was keen to paint historical, literary and mythological subjects, which were seen as more prestigious than portraits. 

Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Foster by Angelica Kauffman, 1785, at Ickworth, Suffolk. ©NTPL/Angelo Hornak

Portraits were an important source of income for Kauffman, however. After a brief and disastrous marriage to a conman she married the Venetian painter Antonio Pietro Zucchi in 1781. She ended her life in Rome, where people like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Antonio Canova sought her out.

These paintings can be seen at:

• Ickworth, Suffolk
• Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire
• Saltram, Devon