Cataloguing Original 1821 Royal Pavilion Wallpaper
Paper Conservator Amy has been working with a volunteer over the past few years in order to rehouse and document our historic Pavilion based wallpaper collection. They are nearing the end of this project, but still there are always enjoyable discoveries.
Last week they opened a drawer which contained dozens of fragments of the original North Drawing Room wall decorations – now called the Music Room Gallery. This wallpaper is from 1821/2 and is hand painted and gilded on grey ground paper and mounted on linen.
A copy of a Newspaper article from The Herald (below) was included in the pack of wallpaper fragments (undated):
A discovery of historical interest and importance has been made this week in the roof of the Royal Pavilion.
Climbing among the rafters of the north drawing room on Tuesday, Mr Roy Bradley, the artist engaged in renovating the decoration in the famous Regency palace, discovered a large bundle of white and gold cambric decoration.
This, Mr Clifford Musgrave, the director of the Pavilion estate, recognised as part of the original Chinese decoration of 1822.
Mr Musgrave initiated the search because recently he found a small fragment of the decoration in the building. “Later”, he told the Herald, “I noticed another piece hanging over one of the rafters of the large dome, in the saloon.
Mr Musgrave concludes that it must have been in the roof since the original furniture was removed and the palace vacated by the Crown in Queen Victoria’s early days. “Possibly”, he said, “that it was hidden in order that the gold in it might later be recovered. The gold is as bright as the day it was laid on.”
Also included in the notes was a photocopied page from the notes of Mr Roy Bradley dated 1964-64:
“…The present writer found a large quantity of these strips (sufficient to form a panel fitting the wall to one side of the fireplace) above the Saloon ‘bottle’ ceiling, where they had been thrown after they had been torn from the large wooden roller on which the panel (when intact) had been wound.”
All the fragments and documentation are now recorded on our collections database, numbered correctly and safely housed.