Sunday 27 August 2017

Busting Decorative Myths of the Regency Era.

Busting Myths – in particular the Georgian Regency myth that aristocrats clambered to have their walls pasted and wallpapered with damask print and beautiful bird prints, is far from true. Aristocrats during the Georgian period considered silk-clad walls as not only a mark of decorative panache it also became the mark of their wealth, as had vast wall tapestries of old within fortified manorial houses, castles, and palaces.


Frieze work

By the end of the Stuart era (Queen Anne) when velvet as a favoured upholstery fabric had already been superseded by damask print, we see in the Georgian period where silk print, from damask to stripes, the latter very much in vogue prior to and the early years of the Regency era. In many houses oak panelled walls were renovated, the upper removed and replaced with silk panels with glorious effect, and those with silver and gold thread shimmered in candle light even though silk itself reflected light.


Silk Clad Wall

With new found wealth of the Georgian age, a good many of the grand estates built on slavery in foreign parts, not least in the West Indies, (though the British were not alone in the practise of slavery, which included the French, Dutch et al) and as grand new houses and estates appeared on the English landscape, likewise whole streets in towns and cities were erected (Bath, Cheltenham, London et al, and Bright Helmstone latterly known as Brighton in the era of the Regency).


Silk Cladding. 


With new wealth came new builds and large windows to create light and airy rooms, French windows opening onto terraces, and so too desire for elegance escalated with grand orangeries, and long before the Victorians went wild with glass house construction. Victorians went to town with conservatories from modest to spacious, from lean-to to freestanding, thus almost every garden in Victorian England had a greenhouse of one sort or another, often erected by occupants, except for the very poor who lived in back-to-back houses with tiny yards.

  





Many of the grand new houses adopted Grecian themed interiors with glorious single colour panels with not only plaster frieze work to ceilings but to walls, not unalike Jasper Ware as can be seen with Wedgewood ware crockery, ornamental dishes, bowls, pots ‘n’ all. 



The reason for no wallpaper being the first wallpapers of the Regency era were rather garish and more attuned to walls at theatres, music halls, and those lacking taste, as many said of the Regent himself, as tending tasteless in dress.






Ghastly, were they not?