Object label:
Pictures depicting large emblematic male and female figures in garden settings used as wallpaper in the Chinese Dressing Room at Saltram National Trust Inventory No. 872998
Around 1760s
The wallpaper in the Chinese Dressing Room is probably the oldest at Saltram. It is painted on mulberry paper, depicting elegant people in a garden setting. The pictures are printed on paper in black and white and then coloured by hand.
The scheme is made up of multiple copies of two Chinese hand-coloured prints. 20 alternating pairs of prints were mounted on a textile lining. The joins between the prints have been disguised by skillful paper hanger, who cuts off the top margins around certain motifs and the addition of certain cut-out motifs proves their professionalism. The partition was decorated in a slightly different way, with the addition of large figures cut from other prints, and it appears to have been inserted into the room slightly later. Some colours have faded, particularly in the background.
In this picture, we can see that these Chinese wallpaper are not used alone, they are often complemented by ceramic dolls. Both figures in the painting and the dolls are dressed in the Chinese elegant robe and wearing the same kind of hairstyle. The depiction of these elegant figures probably reveals the life of Chinese high social classes, but it could also be a fancy story that made up to satisfy the curious westerners. Women decorated their bedroom and dressing room with these wallpapers and imagine about the far oriental world. Though their imagination maybe totally different from the real China, it was their great pleasure at that time.
Furthermore, if we look even closer, we realized the image of the plants on the wallpaper are not the same, they are several kinds of plants, and they are probably not from the same location and may not even grow in same climate. Since the paperhanger does these additions of images of plants, we could guess that the paper hangers had never been to China before, though they are good at deal with these Chinese wallpaper. Their understanding of Chinoiserie style could be only according to the tales from the merchants and traveller at that time and images that being exported to Europe.
