Enfilade

Conservation of the feather frieze in the Drawing Room at A la Ronde in Devon

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From the National Trust:

Female Expression through Craft and Design in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Online and in-person, Reed Hall, University of Exeter, 11 July 2024

The National Trust is delighted to announce this hybrid conference inspired by the conservation, outreach, and interpretation project A la Ronde: Conserving the Past, Creating the Future. Intended to forge new bonds with researchers and academic professionals, find synergies with similar projects and properties, and to share stories and discoveries from our recent conservation work in a broader context, the symposium will be offered in hybrid form, with presentations both in-person and online. Booking is available here»

About A la Ronde — A small estate in Lympstone, Devon, this 16-sided house and chapel were built, and perhaps designed, by Jane Parminter and her young cousin and ward, Mary, around 1796, following their return from several Grand Tours of Europe. The house is now owned by the National Trust and contains the extraordinary decorative interiors designed by the Parminters. These include over 27 metres of friezes formed from feathers in the drawing room, patterned wall painting in the central Octagon room, and a Shell Gallery sitting at the top of the house encrusted with over 26,000 individual components, accessed by a narrow Grotto Staircase from below. The wider estate also contained a chapel, alms houses, and school room for local unmarried women and girls, a manse, vegetable gardens, and small picturesque landscape in the context of a ferme ornée. Mary’s will records that the grounds originally contained decorative features including a shellery, fountain, obelisks, and seating. The Shell Gallery, Grotto Staircase, Drawing Room feather frieze, and Octagon have been recently conserved as part of a two-year multi-strand project, A la Ronde: Conserving the Past, Creating the Future, which culminates in 2024.

p r o g r a m m e

9.30  Welcome and Opening Remarks
• Jonathan Fisher (General Manager South East Devon Portfolio, National Trust)
• Emma Mee (Project Lead, National Trust)

9.45  Keynote Presentation
• Daniel Maudlin (University of Plymouth), Making Cottages: Rural Retreat and the Appropriation of the Vernacular in the 18th Century

10.10  Panel 1 | Female-Designed and Commissioned Domestic Spaces
• Rosemary Baird Andrae FSA, The Architectural Patronage of Mrs Montagu, Queen of the Bluestockings
• Tom Coombe (Collections and House Manager, National Trust), The Ornamental Dairy at Croome: Ceramics, Crafting, and Performance
• Jyoti Pandey Sharma (School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi), Transculturalism in 19th-Century Mofussil India: Begam Samru and Her Architecturally Hybrid Sardhana Palace
• Saniya Siddiqui (School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi), Taj Mahal Palace: A Royal Residence Commissioned by Nawab Shah Jahan Begum (r.1868–1901), Ruler of Bhopal Princely State in the British-ruled Indian Subcontinent

11.30  Coffee Break

11:45  Panel 2 | A la Ronde and National Trust Conservation Work
Convenor: Nigel Blades (Head of Conservation, National Trust)
• Daniel Cull (Conservator, National Trust), Conserving the Past, Creating the Future: A Summary of the Conservation Project at A la Ronde
• Nicola Shreeve (Remedial Conservator, National Trust), The Technical Investigation and Conservation of the Octagonal Chairs from A la Ronde
• Nicola Walker (Senior National Conservator, Paper and Photography, National Trust), Shells, Curtains, and a Doll’s House: Conservation and Collaboration

1.00  Lunch

1.45  Panel 3 | Decorative Historic Interiors and Material Histories
• Lucy Powell (Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, University of Oxford), ‘The Feather’d Fair’: Women, Femininity, and Feathers in the 1790s
• Clare Taylor (The Open University), ‘Our New Paper Hangings’: Women and Wallpaper in 18th-Century Britain
• Libby Horsfield (PhD student, Birkbeck University), The Centre of Attention: Women’s Crafted Fire Screens and the Country House Interior in the 19th Century
• Emily Deal (Digital Curator, National Trust), The Material Biography of Molly Lepell: Material Culture and Collection as a Form of Life Writing in the 18th Century

3.00  Coffee Break

3.10  Panel 4 | Georgian Period Embellished Decorative Interiors Using Natural Materials
Convenor: Rachel Conroy (Senior National Curator, Decorative Arts, National Trust)
• Wenyu Dong (MA student, Central Academy of Fine Arts), From Chinese Chambre to Feather Room: Elizabeth Montagu’s Interiors in the 1760s and 1780s London
• Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi (Senior Lecturer, Victorian Literature and Culture, Bath Spa University), The Eventfulness of Nature: Women and the Seashore in the Long 19th Century
• Beth Howell (Business Services Coordinator, National Trust), ‘Call Us Not Weeds!’: Examining the Aesthetics of Upcycling and Anonymity in Victorian Depictions of Seaweed
• Laura Keim (Stenton Curator), Kaila Temple (Stenton Curatorial Assistant), and Lara Kaplan (Objects Conservator Winterthur Museum), ‘Place to Cultivate Her Mind in by Musing’: Anne Reckless Emlen’s 1757 Shellwork Grotto

4.50  Closing Remarks
• Sarah Lloyd (Research Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London)