Wallpaper

This paper is from the Drawing Room on the first floor of Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire, a house built between 1593 and 1600 for Thomas Tailor, Registrar to the Bishop of Lincoln, probably to a design by Robert Smythson. The room was created from what may have been an unfinished Great Chamber in the original house as part of alterations for Sir John Hussey Delaval, between 1760 and 1764. The picture hang for this room was planned with great care, for the wallpaper did not continue behind the picture frames, which were in turn linked to the architecture of the room by additional gilt papier-mâché ornament bought in 1775. The 1760s wallpaper remained in situ until the 1950s when the room was returned to its original size after being reduced in Edwardian times. As there was no longer enough of the original paper left, a reproduction printed to match the present colour of the blue flock was hung instead. These three widths were probably intended for a pier. They retain their original border of a running guilloche design linking them into a single visual unit.The pattern of this magnificent wallpaper – probably the most fashionable pattern of the 1760s – is derived from woven velvets or damasks. It matches the ‘Crimson Emboss'd paper' supplied by Chippendale to Sir William Robinson's house in Soho Square, London, a damask at Dumfries House and wallpapers from Eagle House, Bathford, Somerset, Barlaston Hall, Staffordshire, and Strawberry Hill, Twickenham. In addition to occasionally supplying Chinese wallpapers, Chippendale is known to have designed bespoke wall hangings for favoured clients. For Edwin Lascelles' Gallery at Harewood in 1776 he provided ‘41 Pieces of paper of the Antique Ornament with Palms &c on a fine paper with a pink ground – The pattern cut on purpose…@30/- £61 10.0d… Designing and making a Drawing at Large with the proper Colours for the paper Maker £3.3.0d.' The cost of 30s a piece was twice that of the Chinese wallpaper at Nostell Priory. Much more cheaply, Chippendale's men could hang interiors with plain cartridge paper and tint them by hand in a uniform wash or in stripes with popular colours especially blue or green ‘verditure'. Generally speaking, it seems more likely that Chippendale obtained patterned wall hangings from professional paper strainers and acted as a retailer. Even here Chippendale was able to provide a bespoke service: his correspondence with Sir Rowland Winn of Nostell refers to his difficulty in obtaining additional pieces of a special order since ‘the pattern was out of work'. It may be relevant that Chippendale's engraver Matthias Darly was in business with the ‘Manufactory for Paper Hangings' at the sign of the Acorn, Ryder's Yard, Fleet Street, by 1762. His trade card for this venture describes him as ‘Painter, Engraver & Paper Stainer'; Engraving in all its Branches viz Visiting Tickets, Coats of Arms, Seals, Book Plates, Frontispieces, Shopkeepers Bills &c…'.

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