Saturday 17 October 2009

Visiting Temple Newsam.




Well the number 40 bus was a hit!  ...seeing as I'm geographically challenged, I was pretty surprised when after a longg walk up a hill I actually arrived at the house and found Nick!

It was nice to get out of the city for once! The house was beautiful, and Nick showed us around telling us about it's history and more about its ancestors and going's on in the house over all the years it's been there.

Going there for the wallpaper, I was stunned as I walked in to every room. Each had a different wallpaper and different technique used to create it. Nick said that the wallpapers had actually been re-created over the last few years but from samples that were found around the house. One sample had been found in a fire place and then re-created!
In a couple of rooms there had been original wallpaper left on the walls and in frames for visitors to see. It was nice to compare the re-created paper with the historical, seeing the print technique used and also to see how old it truly was.



-It was hard to get any good photos as to photograph you needed written permission, being with Nick it was okay, but we were told to be discreet. Hence the AWFUL photos!-

In each room there appeared to be a different technique used, looking closely they were visible. In this paper, in looks a little like it could be fabric, when you look closer, as in the second picture, you can see that the edges of the design are all sewn round.



It was interesting to see that techniques had actually been mixed, for instance in the room below, flock had been mixed with what i thought looked like a screen print technique. What was even nicer is that from afar the printed papers looked pristine and crisp, but as you got closer you could see the real detail and marks made by the paint and texture made by the print technique and paint used.


In a room called 'GREEN ROOM', was a fantastic repeated pattern wallpaper in flock. It was amazing to look at. This is something I want to look into creating.



Another flock wallpaper within the house was this one... using the same colours as the other room, but with a not so repetitive design. Infact, this design in a big room, looked more like what's around today in the wonderful world of flock.





The most interesting story was about a Chinese inspired room, with a Chinese silk printed wallpaper of birds, nature and bird cages. The paper itself was supposed to de-picture what you would see as you looked out of a balcony window. The paper was designed by a guy called...' will found out...'and given to a lady at the house, who cut up his book/design. He was furious. If you look closely at the paper you can where the lady would have cut out from the wallpaper and so on some of the joins there have been placed birds and other images to try and blend it. In the picture below, bright blue little bird next to vase on the far left, has been placed on one of the joins!





In the house there was also a room containing historic textiles given to Temple Newsam by the private collector Roger Warner, who acquired many fabrics during his fifty years career as an antique dealer. They were mostly furnishings bought at country house sales. The rest he inherited from his grandfather, Metford Warner, who was the owner of a leading Victorian wallpaper printing firm, Jeffery & Co. of London. Metford Warner collected pieces of textile from many sources as design inspirations for is wallpapers.

As a result many of the fragments in the cabinet at Temple Newsam have especially interesting or unusual pattern. The textiles range from the 17th century to the early 20th centuries. These are silks, cottons, linens, and embroided pieces. All which together provide an insight into devlopments in pattern design and manufacture. 







Here are a couple more photos of rooms within the house, and also a couple of images of information about the restoration of one of the bedrooms and wallpaper. 






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