Chinese wallpaper at the houses we care for

Written by

Emile de BruijnAssistant National Curator, Decorative Arts, National Trust

Expert curated

A close-up of Chinese wallpaper at Belton House, depicting bamboo, climbing plants and birds, with human figures in the foreground. — Chinese wallpaper at Belton House in Lincolnshire | © National Trust Images/Martin Trelawny

You may not expect to see pictures of Chinese gardens and landscapes on the walls of a British country house. Yet, we care for the largest collection of historic Chinese wallpapers on permanent public display in the world.

When trade between Asia and Europe grew in the 17th century, Europeans developed a taste for Chinese art and design. By the mid-18th century, Chinese wallpapers had become a highly fashionable ingredient of British country house interiors.

Eighteen historic houses in our care contain examples of Chinese wallcoverings. They include woodblock-printed wallpaper, collages of Chinese prints and paintings, and fully hand-painted wallpaper.

Some of the historic woodblock prints used in these wallpapers now only survive in European houses, even though they were originally made for the Chinese market.

Early trade with China

In the early 17th century, English and Dutch merchants formed so-called East India Companies to spread the risk of trading with Asia. The products they commissioned from Asian suppliers reflected European taste. There was strong demand in Europe for Indian chintz, Japanese lacquer and Chinese porcelain.

China in the European imagination

Alongside the demand for Chinese products, at this time there was also great respect and admiration for Chinese civilisation. Jesuit missionaries, trying to convert Chinese people to Christianity, produced enthusiastic books about the country and its people.

These were popular in Europe and helped create an image of China as an ancient, stable, wealthy and virtuous country. This contrasted with the religious conflict and near-constant warfare affecting 17th-century Europe.

Chinese lacquer screen at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk | © National Trust Images/David Kirkham

Luxury goods and private trade

Apart from the bulk imports of Chinese tea, porcelain and silk, there were also smaller quantities of Chinese lacquer, paintings and prints being brought to Europe.

East India Company employees were allowed to import such things privately, sometimes sparking new consumer trends.

Paper wallcoverings in Europe

The late 17th century also saw the development of paper wallcoverings in Europe, as a cheaper alternative to tapestries and painted leather hangings.

As part of this trend, Chinese paintings and prints began to be used as 'wallpaper'. Specialist paper-hangers inserted them into gaps in the wooden wall panelling or used them to create wall-covering collages.

Woodblock printing

Until fairly recently, historians assumed that Chinese wallpaper was always entirely painted by hand.

But research into our collections has confirmed that the first Chinese wallpapers to be purpose-made for the European market, made around 1750, were in fact woodblock-printed, with colours added by hand.

Presumably, the European taste for Chinese prints gave Chinese printing workshops the idea to produce large, wallpaper-sized prints for the foreign market

Early examples of woodblock printed paper

There are examples of early woodblock-printed Chinese wallpaper at Uppark House in West Sussex, Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk and Ightham Mote in Kent. Up close, you can see tell-tale small breaks in the black lines that are common to woodblock printing.

Uppark House, Sussex

This is a fragment of woodblock-printed wallpaper that miraculously survived after a disastrous fire at Uppark House in 1989. Such fragments were found among the debris, emerging from beneath a later wallpaper. As they'd been protected from light for a long time, careful conservation revealed colours that were remarkably fresh, despite their singed edges.

Part of the mid-18th century Chinese wallpaper from the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg, detailing a brightly coloured bird and foliage. — Detail from the wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Felbrigg Hall, in Norfolk | © National Trust Images/David Kirkham

Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk

This woodblock-printed wallpaper, with colours added by hand, was hung in the Chinese Room at Felbrigg in 1752 by a London paper-hanger called John Scrutton. Initially, the different sheets didn’t overlap or link up visually, so Scrutton cut off the margins around the trees and plants to make it look like a continuous garden panorama. The individual sheets, which appear to have been printed from a single carved block, are more than two meters tall.

Faded Chinese wallpaper at Ightham Mote in Kent — Chinese wallpaper depicting birds, flowers, trees and rocks at Ightham Mote in Kent | © National Trust Images/Paul Highnam

Ightham Mote, Kent

Some of the wallpaper panels used at Ightham Mote were the same as those used at Felbrigg Hall but they were arranged, cut and combined differently by the paper-hangers. The colours are also different because the wallpaper at Ightham was affected by damp and was touched up with oil-based paints around 1900.

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Decorative collage

Alongside purpose-made Chinese wallpaper, Chinese prints and paintings continued to be used as wallcoverings in the 1740s and 1750s.

The original meaning of these images was not well understood in Britain, but the cultural prestige that China enjoyed made them fashionable as interior design accessories.

Examples of collage and silk wallpaper

Saltram, in Devon, is home to rare early Chinese wallpaper.

In the study at Saltram

Collages of paintings and prints, probably created in the 1740s or 1750s, were used in the study (originally a private sitting room). They show landscapes, cityscapes, human figures and deities. They appear to have been made for the Chinese market and may have been brought from Guangzhou (Canton) to Europe by an enterprising ship commander or merchant.

A close up of details on the wallpaper that decorates the Chinese Bedroom in Saltram house, Devon — Wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Saltram, Devon | © National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

A landscape on silk at Saltram

The wallpaper in the Chinese Bedroom at Saltram contains scenes of the growing, harvesting, treating and packaging of tea. The images come from sets of pictures commissioned by Chinese emperors, recording and celebrating the industries and products of the realm. They promoted the ideal of a harmonious society, in which the emperor’s subjects were happy and productive.

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Painted wallpapers

From the late 1750s, fully hand-painted Chinese wallpapers took the place of printed wallpapers. Several painters would work on each sheet, specialising in different elements such as architecture, rockwork, foliage and human figures.

Bird-and-flower motifs

There was a long tradition in China of painting birds and flowers. These motifs were also used on Chinese export wallpapers.

From about 1770, the Chinese painting workshops began adding brightly coloured backgrounds to their bird-and-flower wallpapers, probably designed to update their product and keep the European market interested.

Symbolism in Chinese wallpaper

The botanist Joseph Banks praised the Chinese wallpaper painters for what he saw as their scientific accuracy. But the presence of a mythical Chinese phoenix in the wallpaper at Nostell Priory (below) shows how Chinese artists were treating this scenery as a network of symbolic images, rather than a realistic copy of nature.

Individual birds and flowers had traditional symbolic meanings. A pair of ducks signified loyalty, pheasants were symbolic of beauty, peonies indicated fame and bamboo represented humility. These meanings were reinforced or refined when various motifs were combined.

Examples of painted wallpapers

Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

At Nostell Priory, the cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale not only supplied the furniture, he also sourced and hung the Chinese wallpaper. In the State Bedroom, Chippendale’s green and gold Chinese-style furniture harmonises with the luscious vegetation depicted in the wallpaper. The birds and flowering trees appear to be realistic, but they also include a mythical phoenix.

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18th- and 19th-century innovation

Examples of Chinese wallpapers from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century show how the painting workshops continued to innovate. Designs for balustrades, bird cages and baskets of flowers were added to make scenes look even more like elegant gardens.

The 1790s saw the development of another type of wallpaper which combined human figures – based on genre paintings – along the bottom edge, with birds and flowers above.

Chinese Rooms

There was less demand for Chinese wallpaper during the 19th century, but it was still used as part of high-end interior decoration.

By now, the taste for Chinese decoration was so ingrained in Britain that every grand country house was expected to have at least a few rooms decorated with Chinese wallpaper. These would generally be relatively private and informal rooms, like bedrooms, dressing rooms and drawing rooms.

Heritage chic

Towards the end of the 19th century, historic Chinese wallpapers began to be bought and sold as antiques. Quite a few of them made their way to the United States. They were welcomed as exemplars of traditional Chinese art and European heritage chic.

Examples of 18th- and 19th-century wallpaper

Belton House, Lincolnshire

An example of wallpaper inspired by genre paintings from the 1790s was hung in the Chinese Bedroom at Belton in about 1840. The overall design of the wallpaper is significantly more stylised than the painted wallpapers from the 1770s. The figures in the foreground are on a smaller scale and more like a decorative frieze than a realistic scene.

Chinese wallpaper depicting a garden, at Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd | © National Trust Images/Paul Highnam

Lower India Room, Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd

At Penrhyn Castle, Chinese wallpapers were combined with neo-Norman architecture and furnishings – in the eclectic taste of the 1830s, European medieval and Chinese styles were evidently compatible. The wallpaper in the Lower India Room represents a picturesque Chinese garden.

Chinese wallpaper depicting bamboo and butterflies at Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd | © National Trust Images/Paul Highnam

State Dressing Room, Penrhyn Castle, Gwynedd

There’s a section of the Chinese wallpaper in Penrhyn’s State Dressing Room that was kept in storage for many years and only recently hung to replace damaged sections. The colours are bright and saturated, demonstrating how much more colourful Chinese wallpapers looked when they were first hung.

Chinese wallpaper handpainted with bamboo and birds, at Nostell, West Yorkshire | © National Trust Images

Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire

When Nostell Priory was being refurbished in the 1870s and 1880s, some new Chinese wallpaper was brought in to decorate a dressing room, complementing the Chinese wallpaper that Chippendale had introduced more than a hundred years before. This shows a section of the wallpaper hung in 1883.

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An example of modern-day Chinese wallpaper in the Dining Room at Avebury Manor, Wiltshire | © National Trust Images/John Hammond

Chinese wallpaper is a living tradition, a product of an ancient Chinese discipline that has been shaped and preserved outside of Asia by European and American tastes. The wallpaper on display at 18 historic houses in our care reveals a longstanding Western fascination with Chinese art and design over 400 years.

Paintings on display in the Upper Gallery at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire

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