Prof Clare Taylor

Gilt Leather, sources and wallpapers in the V&A Collections

I am a specialist in the history of the interior and its decoration. I am a member of the Art History Department at the Open University, where I have authored materials on subjects ranging from the Elizabethan country house to Utility furniture. I have published widely on wallcoverings and the decoration of the home, including in the V&A Magazine, and from 2019-22 was a nominated academic on the BBC/OU series, Secrets of the Museum.

I am currently authoring a book on Gilt Leather Rooms across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The fieldwork for this project was supported by a Mid-Career Fellowship from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. As part of this project, I am working with V&A curators to research the Museum’s gilt leather collections, their printed sources, and the wallpapers which imitated their visual effects.

Selected publications

‘Musical instrument covers and their makers in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain and Ireland’, Galpin Society Journal, 2024, 138-142

‘Old Blocks and Modern Papers: the enduring appeal of 18^th century wallpaper patterns’, Wallpaper History Review, 2024, 55-58

‘Gilt Leather at Gwydir Castle’, PMC Notes, 20, Winter 2022

The Design, Production & Reception of Eighteenth-century wallpaper in Britain (Routledge, 2018)

‘“Modern Swedish rococo”: the Neo-Georgian interior in Britain, c.1920-c.1945’, in Elizabeth McKellar and Julian Holder, eds, Neo-Georgian Architecture 1880-1970: a reappraisal (Historic England, 2016), 151-166