Decorative arts
Wallpapers at Temple Newsam: 1635 to the present Anthony Wells-cole and Barbara Walker (Leeds Art Fund/d & M Heritage, £50)
The rich legacy of wallpapers hung by successive owners of the Tudor-jacobean mansion at Temple Newsam, West Yorkshire, over a period of 300 years, has been celebrated among a small circle of professionals since the papers were first ‘discovered’ and discussed in Sugden and edmundson’s pioneering book A History of English Wallpaper in 1926. Despite the mansion becoming a major decorative-art museum, the wallpapers remained almost invisible, until an exhibition in 1983 gave the necessary impetus for a 35year project to research them and to build up a large museum study collection of documented or provenanced examples from elsewhere. it was also the beginning of a long-term campaign to re-create the ‘lost’ interiors with replica papers from different periods, in partnership with commercial makers, notably Zoffany and Allyson Mcdermott.
The museum also benefitted greatly from a substantial bequest by roger Warner, the well-known Burford antique dealer who inherited wallpapers and designs from his grandfather’s firm Jeffrey & co, which had printed papers designed by William Morris and other leading Victorian figures. Other gifts, including a midVictorian group from Ashburnham Place, east Sussex, and donations from many individuals, have helped to create a remarkably comprehensive museum collection.
The project is finally complete and the lead author, Anthony Wells-cole, who spent the first 10 years of his retirement as senior curator at Temple Newsam, has compiled this lavish, beautifully produced and authoritative catalogue with a long-serving volunteer, Barbara Walker. Some 900 examples are considered in depth and illustrated in full colour, making the book the most up-to-date and detailed study of this subject.
There are some remarkable— and, indeed, beautiful—examples of almost every period, both from the house and collected from other historic buildings. A striking ‘stucco’ Gothick paper of about 1760, found at 1, Amen court, London, was a close match to a fragment discovered in a bedroom at Temple Newsam, for which it has now been replicated.
Other remarkable examples include the ‘Storks and Thrushes’ paper of 1894—probably French, but inspired by an english Oriental-style chintz of about 1770 —that was so popular it was used to decorate different apartments for two separate royal visits to Temple Newsam: the Prince of Wales in 1868 and for the Duke and Duchess of York in 1894; and a two-colour flock paper with an unusual geometric design and an indefinable Modernist character that was hung in a steward’s room at Temple Newsam in 1766.
The book has, at last, made available a whole world of decorative design that will give great pleasure to everyone interested in historic buildings and their interiors. James Lomax