Mandalay Archipelago

Mandalay’ (Bateman’s) c.1712 This tree of life design is drawn directly from the leather wallcoverings in the dining room at Bateman’s, a Jacobean mansion in East Sussex. Elaborate designs such as these were inspired by 17th-century Indian chintzes, which often depicted sinuous flowering trees with birds among their branches. Leather hangings foreran wallpaper as we know it today, and although panels of this kind required a different skill to create, the process by which early wallpapers were hung, and their decorative effect in the room, is very similar. Documented as Dutch in origin, Mr & Mrs Rudyard Kipling paid 100 guineas for them in 1902, having recently bought Bateman’s as their family home. The paper versions are printed on a wide (70cm) roll and the pattern has been adapted to repeat effortlessly and continuously along the wall.