Masculine chinoiserie

Silver monteith at Erddig, Wrexham, maker's mark TA or IA in monogram, London, 1689. ©National Trust/Susanne Gronnow

I have just been having an interesting conversation with Courtney Barnes over at Style Court about issues of femininity and masculinity in design and decoration. Courtney made the perceptive comment that, at least in recent times, chinoiserie or Chinese-style decoration has been seen as ‘feminine’, whereas japonisme or the taste for Japanese design is considered more something ‘for the guys’.

Detail of a chinoiserie motif on the Erddig monteith. ©National Trust/Susanne Gronnow

I am fascinated by how the meaning of certain motifs and styles changes over time, and indeed how feminine and masculine identity is expressed in different periods.

Detail of a chinoiserie motif on the Erddig monteith. ©National Trust/Susanne Gronnow

Shown here is an example of ‘masculine’ chinoiserie, a silver monteith at Erddig, Wrexham, with chased decoration in the pseudo-Chinese style popular in Britain in the 1680s. Monteiths were used as punchbowls or to cool glasses and as such were an accoutrement of male conviviality. In Restoration-period Britain chinoiserie seems to have been ‘for the guys’ as well as for the ladies.

Betty Ratcliffe, artist in service

Model of the classsical ruins at Palmyra, created by Betty Ratcliffe in 1773 from mother-of-pearl, mica and glass and loosely based on illustrations in Robert Wood's 'The Ruins of Palmyra' (1753). ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

In response to a previous post on pagodas, a reader asked about the artist who created the model of the pagoda at Erddig. So here are some more of her works.

Needlework picture by Betty Ratcliffe, c. 1770, showing a spray of flowers including roses, honeysuckle and jasmine. ©National Trust/Susanne Gronnow

Elizabeth Ratcliffe (c. 1735-c. 1810) was the daughter of a Chester clockmaker. She became a lady’s maid and companion to Dorothy Yorke, née Hutton (d. 1787), who spent her long widowhood in the family’s London house in Park Lane.

Pencil drawing by Betty Ratcliffe after Hubert Drouais the younger, depicting the sons of the Duc de Bouillon as Montagnards, 1765. ©NTPL/John Hammond

The Yorke family recognised Betty’s talents and paid for her education. She seems to have excelled at fine and detailed work.

The Yorke family arms in cut paper, by Betty Ratcliffe. ©National Trust

There is a fascinating collection of servant portraits at Erddig, although sadly no picture of Betty – but she obviously lives on through her work.

On the paper trail

Fragment of a pomegranate wallpaper found under a tapestry in the Tapestry Room at Erddig. ©NTPL/Barry Hamilton

The National Trust’s wallpaper detective, Andrew Bush (his actual, but far too sensible title is Paper Conservation Adviser), has recently discovered a fragment of an early wallpaper at Stowe, Buckinghamshire that is identical to a rather bold pomegranate or proto-Paisley wallpaper found at Erddig in Wrexham.

View of the New Inn at Stowe in 1809 by J.C. Nattes. ©National Trust

The New Inn at Stowe was built in about 1717 to cater for the increasing numbers of people that were coming to visits its famous gardens. It stayed in use as an inn until about 1850, and after years of dereliction it has now been restored to serve as the National Trust’s visitor centre for Stowe.

Some of the wallpapers discovered at the New Inn. ©National Trust/Andrew Bush

Andrew was called in for a one-off visit to check if there were any significant wallpapers, but this turned into a more substantial project as more than sixty wallpapers gradually came to light, dating from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.

The wallpaper fragment discovered at the New Inn, with the same pattern as the section found at Erddig. ©National Trust/Andrew Bush

A tiny scrap of wallpaper found beneath one of the floorboards turned out to be of the same pattern as the Erddig paper, which could be dated through tax stamps to about 1715-20. The wallpaper would seem to be too grand for an inn, so it remains a puzzle as to how it ended up in an estate building at Stowe.

More about this story can be found in the latest edition of Arts, Buildings and Collections Bulletin. In this issue Sarah Kay also summarises the findings about the Regency card racks at Attingham which keen readers of this blog so generously helped us to unearth.

A touch of Robert Adam

Pair of late-eighteenth-century cutlery urns with a provenance from Chirk Castle and Bowood House. ©Christie’s

We have just managed to buy a pair of urn-shaped cutlery boxes for Chirk Castle, near Wrexham, Wales, that may have been designed by Robert Adam. The urns were originally made for Bowood House, in Wiltshire, the country house of the first Marquess of Lansdowne, which Adam helped to build and decorate.

The boxes came to Chirk Castle in the twentieth century through Lady Margaret Nairne, who had connections with the Lansdowne family and who married Lieutenant-Colonel Ririd Myddelton of Chirk in 1931. They were sold by the Myddelton family in 2004, and we bought them back at auction at Christie’s in New York on 14 April.

The east front of Chirk Castle. ©NTPL/Matthew Antrobus

Chirk Castle still clearly shows it medieval origins. It was built around 1300 as part of a string of castles consolidating the Welsh conquests of the English King Edward I. In 1595 Chirk was purchased by the Elizabethan merchant adventurer Thomas Myddelton, whose descendants inhabited it for the next four hundred years.

The State Dining Room at Chirk. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The State Dining Room at Chirk, where the cutlery boxes will soon be put back, was redecorated in the neo-classical manner for Richard Myddelton, MP, in the late 1770s. This late eighteenth-century layer of taste at Chirk was followed by a Victorian phase of decoration, designed by A.W. Pugin.

The reacquired cutlery urns, in turn, represent the era of Lieutenant-Colonel Ririd Myddelton and his wife Lady Margaret, who cared for the castle after the Second World War. In 1978 they sold Chirk to the government, which conveyed it to the National Trust in 1981.

Degrees of exoticism

The state bedroom at Erddig. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

I previously showed the red japanned cabinet at Erddig, but there is more chinoiserie at that extraordinary house. Right next to the cabinet is the state bed from about 1720 with its Chinese embroidered hangings.

Detail of the state bed, showing the Chinese embroidered silk and the gilded woodwork probably by John Belchier. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

The state bed was probably made by the London cabinetmakers John Hutt and John Belchier. It is a rare surviving example of a lit à la duchesse, a type of bed with a very deep tester introduced to England by William III’s architect Daniel Marot.

Craftsmen like Hutt and Belchier did not hesitate to combine east Asian and English elements. But at the same time their work shows great respect for and fascination with east Asian art and design.

Detail of the Chinese wallpaper in the state bedroom, installed in the 1770s. ©NTPL/John Hammond

In the 1770s Philip Yorke I, the great-nephew of John Meller, and his heiress wife Elizabeth added another layer of chinoiserie to the house. It was they who moved the state bed upstairs and added the Chinese wallpaper to what now became the state bedroom.

The Chinese Room. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

Philip Yorke I also created a ‘Chinese room’ for the display of porcelain, which was decorated with Chinese export paintings of crafts and trades.

One of the late-eighteenth-century Chinese export paintings in the Chinese Room, illustrating the pounding of rice. The printed border is European. ©NTPL/John Hammond

These pictures are meticulously realistic, and yet they are used mainly for decorative effect. Even though trade with China had increased hugely during the eighteenth century, the country had become more rather than less remote in European eyes.

Whereas around 1700 China was seen as an example to European nations, towards the end of the eighteenth century it was regarded as a country almost outside of history, where nothing ever changed.

Theatrical symmetries

©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

Due to lack of time this has to be a very short post, but I thought I would show another view of  this stunning bureau cabinet at Erddig, Wrexham. It seems to be a good example of the theatrical type of chinoiserie mentioned in the previous post. 

It was probably supplied to Erddig in the 1720s by the cabinet-maker John Belchier. The house was then owned by the wealthy barrister John Meller, who enriched it with magnificent furniture, much of which is still there.

Erddig's east front. ©NTPL/Rupert Truman

The facade of Erddig, at the head of its canal, has something similarly theatrical about it. This may remind us that the theatricality of certain kinds of chinoiserie owes as much to the exuberance of the Baroque and the Rococo as it does to the perceived exoticism of China.