Chinese Wallpaper in the Boudoir at Weston Park (detail)

Chinese wallpaper, hand painted with foliage, birds and insects onto great sheets of paper, was imported into Britain from at least the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth century furishers - or 'upholders' - such as Thomas Chippendale, were acquiring sheets for client's houses. Chippendale supplied Chinese paper to Sir Rowland Winn 5th Bt at Nostell Priory in Yorkshire in the latter eighteenth century, the paper being used in the State Suite. The paper was expensive and was often brought to Britain in ships of the East India Company - the company that had originally been set up to regulate spice trade with the East in the sixteenth century. For country houses like Weston Park, these papers, depicting exotic birds became highly desirable and this rare example survives in the first floor Boudoir at Weston Park