Panelled Walls
Stair Parts Fig. 285 Doorway at Seckford Hall, Suffolk
Very great changes in the manner of treating the walls of a room occurred during the course of the century. At first they were panelled with wood not with the small panels of Jacobean times, but with large panels surrounded by bold mouldings, such as those at Denham Place (Stair Parts Fig. 287). Here the mouldings are enriched with carving, which adds considerable richness, but as a rule the mouldings were plain; various examples have already been given in Stair Parts Figs. 122, 126, 135, 139. There was usually a low dado with long horizontal panels, and above the dado rail were lofty vertical panels reaching up to a massive cornice. The effect is always simple and dignified, whether the material is oak or painted deal. Of course the panels very much restrict the freedom of arrangement of pictures, but in those days pictures were not so plentiful as they became later, prints were few, and so were the amateur artists who bestow the fruit of their elegant leisure upon their friends. The panels therefore hampered nobody, and they were in themselves a sufficient decoration. Family portraits or notable pictures were sometimes framed into them as part of the scheme.
Stair Parts Fig. 287 The Library, Denham Palace, Buckinghamshire
Stair Parts Fig. 288 Stoneleigh Abbey, Warwickshire, The Saloon by Smith of Warwick
Stair Parts Fig. 289 House in Queen Square Bath
The backgrounds of engravings published during the first half of the eighteenth century often show these large panels, as well as sash-windows with stout bars. They seem to harmonise with the flowing wigs, the wide coat skirts and knee-breeches of the actors in the incidents which the prints are intended to record.
An unusual form of panelling, but one which is both cheap and effective, is to be seen in the audit room at Boughton House (Stair Parts Fig. 286). It consists of boards nailed vertically to the wall, having the joints covered with a moulding; below is a skirting, and above is a frieze and cornice.
Wood panelling was gradually superseded by panels formed in plaster on the plastered walls. Gibbs's drawings have already afforded examples of this treatment (Stair Parts Figs. 166-169), and any book on house design of the eighteenth century will supply others. Stoneleigh Abbey,. Kenilworth, has panels of unusual richness (Stair Parts Fig. 288), and a house in Queen Square, Bath, by one of the Woods, has some delicately modelled panels on the staircase (Stair Parts Fig. 289). The drawback to this method of decoration is that, being rather ambitious in aim, it challenges criticism much more definitely than does simple panelling. It is conceivable that one eventually might tire of seeing the same youth piping to the same old man, and the same lady for ever playing the same organ without looking at her notes.
But a more radical change in wall decoration was to come in the shape of wall papers. The early history of this method of adorning rooms has not been fully explored, but it seems clear that already in the seventeenth century sheets of paper covered with stencilled patterns had been pasted on to walls, or perhaps on to the panels into which they were divided. This was a laborious and by no means cheap process, but it contained the germ of the procedure which is so widely adopted to-day. Another and even more effective step was taken when Chinese papers were introduced (Stair Parts Fig. 290). These papers consisted of rolls, each printed with a portion of a large design, which required some five or six pieces to complete it. It was probably of such sets that the vivacious Lady Mary Wortley Montague, most celebrated of blue stockings, wrote to her daughter from Louvere, in 1749, to say, " I have heard the fame of paper hangings, and had some thoughts of sending for a suite, but was informed that they were as dear as damask is here, which put an end to my curiosity." In some cases curiosity outweighed thriftiness, and the suites still remain in a few old houses ; here and there some of the original rolls still exist, rolls which for some reason or other were not used, and which have luckily escaped destruction. Chinese papers became fashionable, and it is not difficult to imagine the process of evolution from rolls-each bearing part of a large design either of trees and flowers, or of a landscape or a figure subject, after the manner of tapestry-to other rolls all printed alike and forming a continuous pattern, with the parts duly repeated, which should cover the whole walls with decoration of a sort. The advantages of the new method were obvious : it was cheap ; and although at first the paper was applied to canvas nailed to battens on the wall, yet eventually it was placed on the wall itself, and thus did away with the spaces between the walls and the panelling or tapestry, where dirt or spiders or more noxious insects could harbour ; rough surfaces were rendered smooth, joints between wood frames and stone or brick walls were filled with plaster, and draughts were lessened. Most of these advantages were obtained by plastered walls ornamented with panels, but plain surfaces covered with paper were cheaper, and gave greater scope for the unrestricted hanging of pictures and prints as the taste for such things developed. Then, again, more and more people lived in hired houses, and with every fresh tenant new papers could readily be pasted over the old. There was no idea in those days of stripping off the previous papers ; and in dealing with ancient houses as many as twenty layers of paper have sometimes been found. But our notions of sanitation have improved, and in the present day everything is removed down to the plaster before the new paper is hung.
Stair Parts Fig. 290. A Chinese Paper,Ramsbury, Wiltshire