Wallpaper is a neglected area of study in the eighteenth-century domestic space. However, this talk argues that it was an integral part of schemes and provided a new kind of fashionable finish in the home, one associated with ideas of gentility and decorum. Evidence from tradesmen and consumers will be analysed to show how the new material was characterised and compared with other decorative materials with which it competed, such as wood panelling and textiles.
The lecture draws on my work bringing together letters and accounts of decoration with surviving fragments of wallpaper and the sites where it was hung, including examples of block printed, flocked and hand painted Chinese wallpapers. It demonstrates that wallpaper can be used to shed light on the consumption of these new decorative products by men as well as women and on its hanging in town houses as well as in the country house.

Clare Taylor is Professor of Art History and Material Cultures at The Open University. Prior to joining the OU, she lectured at Middlesex and Bucks Universities and held curatorial positions in Manchester as well as in Aberdeen, South Wales and for English Heritage. Clare is a specialist in the historic interior and the author of The Design, Production and Consumption of Eighteenth-Century Wallpaper in Britain (Routledge, 2018). She has contributed journal articles and book chapters on interiors, ranging from Chinoiserie to studies of eighteenth-century wallpaper trades.
In 2020 she was awarded a Mid-Career Fellowship by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for her research project ‘Gilt Leather Rooms: Decorating with Gilt Leather hangings in Britain c.1600-c.1800’, the subject of her forthcoming monograph.