More Chinese botanicals.(Editorial)

One of the most fascinating houses in the north of England is Temple Newsam House in Leeds. West Yorkshire. The venerable property on which it is situated was mentioned in 1086 in the Domesday Book. The house has undergone many building campaigns and renovations, and today much of the interior is in the Georgian style. Much younger than Temple Newsam House is the firm Zoffany with headquarters in Hertfordshire, which owes its foundation in 1983 to wallpapers from the Leeds house. In that year Zoffany introduced a line of wallpaper based on about one dozen document wallpapers and borders dating from as early as the seventeenth century, fragments of which were found in rooms of the house (see illustration at top right). From that moment forward, the firm has collected antique textiles and wallpapers so that it now has a large archival collection on which it can draw. Its reproductions range from a copy of a late seventeenth-century Venetian damask to an early seventeenth-century English satin with metallic embroidery.

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As can be gleaned from Karina H. Corrigan's article in this issue (pp. 92-101), the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were remarkably productive in the fields of science and technology. Scientists and laymen alike were intensely curious about the flora of foreign lands and the methods of sending living plants to places where they were unknown. Until shipping methods were developed that insured a high success rate, plantsmen sent the next best things--pressed and dried specimens or a scrupulously accurate rendering. Chinese artists were among the most accomplished copyists and soon learned how to depict plants with amazing verisimilitude, using many of the same methods employed by Western artists, yet integrating ancient techniques of Chinese flower painting. Members of the East India Company stationed in ...