Reframing China

Chinese mirror painting depicting two women sitting at the water’s edge, in an English rococo frame, possibly late 1750s, at Saltram (inv. no. NT872228.1). ©National Trust Images/Rob Matheson

A while ago I mentioned some of the different ways in which Chinese pictures have been framed in the west.

Chinese picture on paper showing a dance performance in a palace courtyard, in an English rococo frame, at Shugborough Hall, mid 18th century (inv. no. NT1271100.4). ©National Trust Collections

While doing some research on the forthcoming catalogue of the Chinese wallpapers in the houses of the National Trust I recently came upon a few more examples of this phenomenon.

Chinese mirror painting depicting a landscape with a woman sitting at the water’s edge and a town in the distance, in a neoclassical frame, at Osterley Park, c. 1760 (inv. no. NT771801). ©National Trust Collections

Chinese pictures have an interesting an puzzling relationship with Chinese wallpaper. The popularity of Chinese pictures in Europe in the late 17th century, which were sometimes mounted into the wall paneling, seems to have stimulated the development of purpose-made Chinese wallpaper during the 18th century.

Chinese picture on paper depicting a stage in the production of silk, with a Chinese paper border and mounted as wallpaper at Erddig in the 1770s. ©National Trust Collections

Even at the end of the 18th century, though, Chinese pictures were still being used as ‘wallpaper’, alongside ‘proper’ Chinese wallpaper. As ever, the marketplace has a habit of creating diversity and disrupting clear-cut, teleological stories.

In a mottled mood

Detail of the Chinese wallpaper with its imitation bamboo trellis border in the Chinese Bedroom at Blickling Hall, inv. no. NT354141. ©National Trust Collections

Our little Chinese wallpaper study group was recently discussing the use of printed and painted paper borders which give a trompe l’oeil impression of mottled bamboo trelliswork. They were probably made by the same Guangzhou workshops which produced the actual wallpapers and they seem to have been particularly popular during the second half of the 18th century.

Fragment of a painted imitation bamboo trelliswork border, formerly at Hampden House, Buckinghamshire. Victoria & Albert Museum, inv. no. E.948A-C-1978. ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The discussion was sparked off by the border in the Chinese Bedroom at Blickling Hall. We also discussed a very similar border in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, originally from Hampden House, Buckinghamshire. There may be a direct link between the Blickling and the Hampden borders, as both houses were owned by the Earls of Buckinghamshire, albeit at different times.

Sections of Chinese wallpaper framed with a faux bamboo trelliswork paper border, second half 18th century, from a house at no. 10 Ginnekenstraat, Breda, which was demolished in 1961. Breda’s Museum, inv. no. S06489. ©Breda’s Museum

Anna Wu and Sander Karst told us about another similar border which frames two ‘pictures’ made up of sections of wallpaper that had formerly hung in a town house in Breda, in the Netherlands.

Imitation bamboo chair made of turned, carved and painted beech, c. 1790, owned by David Garrick’s widow. Victoria & Albert Museum, inv. no. W.27-1917 ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The taste for mottled bamboo caught on in England to the extent that the actor David Garrick and his wife had a number of faux mottled bamboo chairs in their villa on the Thames at Hampton between the 1770s and the 1790s.

Corner of the wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Belton House (inv. no. NT433859), showing the faux bamboo European paper border and the imitation bamboo trim on the doorframe. ©National Trust Images/Martin Trelawny

Even as late as 1840 imitation mottled bamboo woodwork and paper borders were still fashionable, as can be seen in the Chinese bedroom at Belton House.

Detail of a Chinese watercolour picture pasted on the wall as part of the ‘wallpaper’ in the Study at Saltram, inv. no. 871979. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

A representation of a decorative mottled bamboo fence in an elegant Chinese garden is visible in one of the pictures used as ‘wallpaper’ on the walls of the Study at Saltram, probably in the late 1760s.

Detail of a mottled bamboo armchair, in scroll 4 of a set of hanging scroll paintings entitled ‘The Eighteen Scholars’, by an anonymous Ming-dynasty artist. ©National Palace Museum, Taipei

In China mottled bamboo was  considered a rare and refined material suitable for scholars and other members of the elite, as is explained in an online exhibition of the National Palace Museum, Taipei. The patterning was thought to add a sophisticated touch of natural boldness to fencing, fretwork, furniture and other objects.

Mottled bamboo and goat’s hair writing brush by Li Dinghe, mid-19th-century. ©The Palace Museum, Beijing

Jonathan Hay has recently written a fascinating study, entitled Sensuous Surfaces, about how materials like mottled bamboo interacted with other patterns, textures and shapes in Chinese interiors during the late Ming and early Qing periods, creating subtle interweavings of visual delight and cultural meaning.

Chinese wallpaper families

Detail of the Chinese wallpaper in the Drawing Room at Ightham Mote, Kent. ©National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie

As the work on the catalogue of Chinese wallpapers in National Trust houses progresses, an informal ‘advisory committee’ has sprung up around it consisting of a dozen or so academics, curators and conservators. We bombard each other with information and queries and general enthusiasm – a genuine little liquid network.

The Drawing Room at Ightham. ©National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie

This morning one member of the group, Dr Clare Taylor, mentioned the similarities between the Chinese wallpaper at Ightham Mote in Kent and the one at at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk. They are in fact almost identical, which makes them a good example of how Chinese wallpapers were sometimes produced as multiples, with the combined use of printing and hand-painting resulting in near-identical copies.

Detail of the Chinese wallpaper at Ightham. ©National Trust Images/Nadia Mackenzie

Another member of the group, conservator Allyson McDermott, then chipped in by saying she had examined the Ightham paper in the past, and found that it had had quite a hard life, with quite a lot of overpainting and restoration over time. This probably explains the difference in colouring between the Ightham and the Felbrigg papers.

The Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk. A pheasant identical to the one in the Ightham paper can be seen behind the bell cord. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

Allyson also mentioned that a Chinese wallpaper that was discovered under later wallpaper at Uppark, West Sussex, was also rather similar, and indeed it has the same ‘frosted’ palette of a white background, subfusc greens and bright reds, purples and blues.

Fragment of Chinese wallpaper found under later wallpaper in the Little Parlour at Uppark, West Sussex.

We know that the Felbrigg paper was hung in 1752, and the Uppark paper is thought to have been put up in about 1750, so this appears to be a relatively early type of Chinese wallpaper. The Ightham one is said to have been hung in about 1800, which suggests that it was hung or stored somewhere else before coming to Ightham.

The antiquarian setting of the Drawing Room at Ightham, with its Jacobean fireplace, is in some ways quite incongruous for a Chinese wallpaper, but that is part of the fascination of this subject: to learn more about the different ways people used Chinese wallpaper in different places and at different times.

Writing the biography of a Chinese wallpaper

Unusual Chinese wallpaper painted with garden walls and trellises, in the Ballroom of Condé Nast’s penthouse at 1040 Park Avenue, New York, in 1924 (image via The Down East Dilettante)

Sometimes beautiful objects disappear from view for a while, and when they re-emerge part of their history has been forgotten. This happened with the Chinese House at Stowe, but it also seems to have happened to an unusual Chinese wallpaper which has just been published in Architectural Digest.

A while ago I spotted this Chinese wallpaper in a post by the Down East Dilettante. It had been painted with garden walls and trellises, which seems to be a rather rare feature. It had been hung in the ballroom of the penthouse of media tycoon Condé Nast, at 1040 Park Avenue, New York, by decorator Elsie de Wolfe in 1924.

The walls-and-trellis wallpaper in Michael S. Smith’s New York dining room. ©Architectural Digest/Björn Wallander

The Dilettante also mentioned it in a comment on my post about the Chinese wallpapers at Saltram, which in turn elicited a reply from Jennifer Gracie, director of the eponymous New York family firm which has been supplying furnishings, wallpaper, painted decoration and antiques since 1898. Jennifer told us that Gracie had acquired the paper after Nast’s penthouse was sold and dismantled in 1943. And very recently they had supplied sections of it for the New York apartment of interior designer Michael S. Smith and James Costos, which has now been published in the September 2012 issue of Architectural Digest.

The wallpaper illustrated in Nancy McClelland’s 1924 book ‘Historic Wallpapers’

Jennifer also sent me an image from Nancy McClelland’s 1924 book Historic Wallpapers which showed the wallpaper when it was owned by Ida Weaver, the wife of coal and railroad baron John Heisley Weaver of Merion, Pennsylvania. Various sources indicate that it had come from Beaudesert, the Staffordshire country house of the Paget family, Marquesses of Anglesey. As much of the contents of Beaudesert was sold in 1921, the wallpaper may have then made its way to Mrs Weaver, but it probably wasn’t hung, as it turned up very soon afterwards in Condé Nast’s penthouse.

The state bed in Lord Anglesey’s bedroom at Plas Newydd, Anglesey, upholstered with Chinese silk. The bed was originally at Beaudesert and came to Plas Newydd when the 6th Marquess gave up the former house in the early 1920s. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

Beaudesert had then only recently been comprehensively redecorated by the interior designer Captain Harry Lindsay for the 6th Marquess of Anglesey. Between 1909 and 1912 Lindsay created sumptuously historicist interiors at Beaudesert which included as many as five rooms with Chinese wallpapers. The house was published in Country Life in two articles by Henry Avray Tipping in the issues of 22 and 29 November 1919. But following the First World War the economic outlook for landed families worsened and the Paget family gave up Beaudesert and concentrated on their other country house, Plas Newydd.  

There is a tantalising reference in the McClelland book to the wallpaper having been in the attic of Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire – presumably unused and in storage – before it came to Beaudesert. So thanks to the Dilettante and to Jennifer Gracie we can now propose the following tentative ‘biography’ for this wallpaper:

• Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire, unused?
• Beaudesert, Staffordshire, hung 1909-12, sold 1921?
• Mrs Ida Irona Weaver, Maroebe, Merion, Pennsylvania, pre-1924?
• Condé Nast’s penthouse at 1040 Park Avenue, New York, installed by Elsie de Wolfe by 1924
• Acquired by Gracie after 1943
• Supplied by Gracie for the apartment of Michael S. Smith and James Costos, New York, 2011

Researching Chinese wallpaper

The Chinese Bedroom, originally a dressing room, at Felbrigg Hall. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

Andrew Bush, Dr Helen Clifford and I are hoping to produce a little catalogue of the Chinese wallpapers in the historic houses of the National Trust. Andrew is the paper conservation adviser for the National Trust, and Helen is a scholar who is also participating in the East India Company at Home research project.

We are hoping to add to the publicly available information about the phenomenon of Chinese wallpapers, which is still not very well understood. Equally, we are keen to compare the examples in National Trust houses with other extant or recorded Chinese wallpapers.

Detail of a gilded rococo mirror by John Bladwell, c. 1752, against the wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall. ©National Trust Images/David Kirkham

At the moment we are aware of seventeen houses now owned by the National Trust which have or had Chinese wallpapers. Within the wider context of Britain and Ireland we have so far found references to about 65 other houses with such papers, and we will probably come across more of them as we progress with our research.

One serendipitous connection which I discovered a while back is the strong similarity between a Chinese wallpaper at Belton House and a section owned by fellow blogger the Columnist, suggesting that they may have been made by the same workshop. We hope to find more such links, so do contact me if you have any information or images that you wish to share.

Detail of the wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall, showing pheasants. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

I have been surprised by the wide geographical spread of the houses where Chinese wallpapers ended up, from Cornwall to East Lothian and from Norfolk to County Westmeath. This seems to indicate how powerful these papers were as a commercial product, their desirability clearly outweighing the obstacles of distance, time and cost.

Chinese nodding-head figurine, c. 1820, placed on a bracket against the wall in the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall. ©National Trust Images/David Kirkham

The Chinese wallpaper at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk, reflects some of these economic and social factors. It was purchased in 1751 by the Norfolk squire William Windham II as part of the redecoration of the house then being masterminded by architect James Paine.

The room it was intended for was then a dressing room, which together with the adjoining bedroom was decorated in shades of off-white. The paper, with its white background and light colouring, was obviously chosen to harmonise with this scheme.

Detail of the wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall, showing a bird, flowers and fruit. ©National Trust Images/David Kirkham

Windham was shocked that it was considered necessary for a specialist to be called in to hang the paper, ‘at 3s 6d per day while at Felbrigg & 6d per mile travelling charges which I think a cursed deal.’ Nevertheless ‘the India Paper hanger’ John Scruton did indeed hang this and other papers in the house between 30 March and 9 May 1752.

Peeling back history

Selection of some of the wallpapers found at the Back to Backs. ©National Trust/Andrew Bush

An exhibition at Back to Backs, a courtyard of preserved working-class houses in Birmingham literally built back-to-back, shows the layers and layers of wallpaper salvaged from the walls when the houses were restored after being acquired by the National Trust in 2004.

The houses and shops built back to back around a courtyard off Hurst Street and Inge Street, Birmingham. ©National Trust Images/Robert Morris

Collections management trainee Husnara Bibi co-ordinated a project to conserve, catalogue and research the wallpaper fragments, which have now gone on display at Back to Backs.

One of the laminates of wallpaper from the Back to Backs. ©National Trust/Andrew Bush

142 different designs were found in 11 different houses. The densest ‘sediment’ consisted of 28 layers, the earliest of which dates from about 1850.

Wallpaper conservator Graeme Storey treating one of the rescued papers. ©National Trust

In some cases we know who lived with particular papers. A series of Victorian floral patterns belonged to a Police Constable, and a set of Arts and Crafts-style papers was found in the house where a brass bedstead caster lived.

One of the preserved sections ©Newman University College/Sarah Bagshaw, Hannah James, Taz Lovejoy

As part of this project, oral history material was collected from people who have worked in wallpaper manufacture and  retail and from decorators, and this is featured on a dedicated blog called Uncovering the Past.

Reconstruction of the original design by James Orton. ©Newman University College/James Orton

Students and staff at Newman University College, Birmingham, have also participated in the project by creating reconstructions of the wallpaper designs and by producing backdrop designs for the exhibition and art photography of the wallpapers and the conservation processes.

Small section of wallpaper. ©Newman University College/Sarah Bagshaw, Hannah James, Taz Lovejoy

The results of their work can be seen on the Splitting the Pattern website.

Reconstruction of the original design by Jenny Woodhouse. ©Newman University College/Jenny Woodhouse

Wallpaper afficionados may also be interested to know of the existence of the Wallpaper History Society, which for the last twenty-five years has been promoting awareness and understanding of wallpapers.

A retro-gendered room at Saltram

The Study at Saltram. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

When I was at Saltram to give the tour I mentioned in the previous post, I was struck by the delicious contradictions inherent in the Chinese wallpaper in the room called the Study. This room had been decorated in the mid eighteenth century as a bedroom or sitting room for one of the ladies of the house. Chinese wallaper and other ‘chinoiserie’ decorations were at this time increasingly associated with the private, ‘feminine’ spaces.

Portrait of Albert Parker, 3rd Earl of Morley, by Ellis Roberts. ©National Trust Images/John Hammond

During the later nineteenth century, however, the 3rd Earl of Morley used the room as his study. Presumably the deccration was by then old fashioned and antiquarian enough to be congenial to a high-minded Victorian patriarch.

Old reference image of the fireplace wall in the Study. ©National Trust Collections

This is a great example of how the associations of certain styles and motifs are never fixed for long, and can turn into their opposites after a generation or two.

Even the original installation of the wallpaper represented a shift in meaning, of course, as entirely unrelated Chinese pictures and sections of wallpaper were slotted together into a kaleidoscopic collage, a realistic and yet surreal mosaic of elegant figures and evocative vistas, an eighteenth-century Pinterest board.

A new old design for Avebury

A mock-up of the design for the Antechamber at Avebury (bottom), the stencil (left) and the chalked-up wall (right). ©NTPL/James Dobson

As part of the ‘Manor Reborn’ project at Avebury Manor on of the rooms was recently redecorated with a facsimile of an early English chinoiserie wallpaper.

The look of the design during the process of painting. ©NTPL/James Dobson

The original, dating to around 1700, came from Ord House in Northumberland and is now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The outlines of the design were printed, with the colours added with the use of stencils and the black background painted in by hand. The paper was then varnished, probably to make it look more like East Asian silk or lacquer.

©NTPL/James Dobson

 For the Antechamber at Avebury painter Mark Sands created a version of this design, but here applied directly onto the wall. Mark used stencils to lay out the pattern, which he then painted in by hand, taking care to recreate the slightly naive look of the original.

A detail from the design: a Chinese lady miraculously perched among flowering and fruiting branches. ©NTPL/James Dobson

In the playful spirit of the project, Mark added local wildlife to the scheme, including wild pansies, red admiral and peacock butterflies, great crested newts (whose appearance in the Avebury garden caused a delay to the project, as they are protected) and even a fox.

The scheme nearing completion. ©NTPL/James Dobson

The Avebury project has generated an interesting debate about how far an organisation like the National Trust should go in recreating history with a degree of freedom rather than rigorously sticking to the available historical evidence.

A 'Chinese' parrot, with a 'Chinese' squirrel lurking nearby. ©NTPL/James Dobson

Avebury was chosen for this project as it doesn’t have much in the way of original contents, and there are certainly no plans to give our other, more fully furnished historic houses such a radical make-over. But if you have an opinion about this kind of approach then do leave a comment.

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.

Chinese wallpaper: a living tradition

Wallpaper in 'Paradiso' pattern, 'Mahogany' colourway. ©Fromental

At the recent panel discussion about chinoiserie at Christie’s Education I met Lizzie Deshayes of Fromental, who held us spellbound with stories about how her company designs and makes bespoke Chinese wallpaper. I have since also met her husband and fellow director Tim Butcher, with whom she set up Fromental in 2005, and who is equally passionate about the subject.

Customised 'Nonsuch' pattern, part-embroidered, in 'Warrington' colourway on silk. ©Fromental

Fromental employs Chinese painters and embroiderers, based in a studio in Jiangsu province, who are skilled in using traditional materials and techniques. Fromental’s craftsmen can produce traditional Chinese wallpapers, as seen in historic houses, but they are equally adept at realising the contemporary designs created by Lizzie and Tim and their team.

Wallpaper in 'Paradiso' pattern, 'Kelly' colourway. ©Fromental

This uninhibited mixing of tradition and modernity gives Fromental’s wallpapers real design integrity: the papers are ‘now’ and yet at the same time you get the sense that they are part of a tradition. 

Part-embroidered 'Paradiso' pattern, 'Old Gold' colourway. ©Fromental

This also gives you a flavour of what the production process of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese wallpapers must have been like. Those earlier designers (about whom virtually nothing is known) were operating within a similar matrix of constraints and opportunities: a traditional pictorial language, the availability of craftsmanship, trends in taste and the economics of consumer demand.

Wallpaper in 'Sylvaner' pattern, 'Bolero' colourway. ©Fromental

What is fascinating too is that there is now a Chinese market for these wallpapers, which were originally made purely for export to the west. International interior designers have been introducing them to Chinese clients, who recognise the traditional motifs and techniques but also appreciate the sense of ‘western’ style that these wallpapers exude.

'Sylvaner' pattern on gold leaf, 'Burnish' colourway. ©Fromental

Here we have yet another twist in the long history of chinoiserie: what was once created in China for a western market is now being re-designed in the west and being adopted by the Chinese as an emblem of international taste.

As it happens, Fromental has also contributed to the joint National Trust – BBC project at Avebury Manor, which I hope to post about shortly.