Senior Lecturer in Art History, Dr Clare Taylor, receives a Mid-Career Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for her project: Gilt Leather Rooms: Decorating with leather hangings in Britain, c.1600-c.1800.

Embossed, gilt and painted leather is a material which both attracts and repels: on the one hand its glittering, tactile finish and complex and colourful patterns can be admired for their visual effects, on the other the idea of hanging animal skins on the wall seems at odds with twenty-first century environmental concerns. However, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gilt leather hangings were at the centre of a global trade, a trade which involved networks around design, making and hanging. The skills and products of specialist tradesmen enabled leather to rival other costly wall treatments, as well as protecting the surfaces of furniture, covering screens and upholstering seating.

This innovative research project will uncover the key role of gilt leather hangings and related objects in relation to issues of status in the creation of ‘Gilt Leather Rooms’. It will also throw new light on inter-materiality in the interior and on the relationship between printed sources, architectural structures and other wall decorations. It will do this by conducting the first full investigation of the people, places and objects associated with leather rooms across the British Isles including not just archival and museum sources, but extant schemes in a wide range of buildings from Edinburgh to Somerset, Dublin to Gwynedd.

Image credit: ‘Cleves’ Room, Preston Manor, Brighton