Osterley Park and House Update
The Team at Osterley Park and House on 19 February 2013 (from left to right – Judith Evans, Kate Smith, Ellen Filor, Pauline Davies, Yuthika Sharma, Margot Finn, Claire Reed). Photography courtesy of Stuart Howat.
Monday 25 February 2013
Update on the Osterley Park and House project from Yuthika Sharma, AHRC Public Engagement Fellow
In our collective effort to explore the fascinating life of Osterley House as an East India Company Home we have come across many interesting leads, which we hope will help shape the exhibition and display planned at Osterley in July 2013. The Child family, whose three generations were traders and served in the Board of Directors of the East India Company, owned the House for the greater part of the eighteenth century. The stunning collection of export art amassed during this period – Chinese ivory and porcelain, Japanese Lacquer, Indian textiles and much more – is showcased within a lavish neoclassical interior redesigned by the architect Robert Adams in 1761. Since the beginning of the 19th century Osterley was owned by the Jersey family until 1949 when it became a National Trust property. As we embark on tracing the material histories of luxury goods brought into Osterley, we are reminded of the powerful network of mercantile connections between Britain and Asia that shaped the domestic lives of East India Company officials.
We are interested to hear from you if you have a story or would like to share your recent experience at Osterley. Please email us at eicathome@ucl.ac.uk.
‘Trappings of Trade: A Domestic Story of the East India Company’, will be on display at Osterley Park and House from 27 July to 3 November 2013.
Hello Yuthika Sharma and Kate Smith
I am a contemporary art curator who, with fellow curator Lucy Day, has been working on a project about chinoiserie for the past few years. We have been working with the NT too and had an exhibition in Plymouth across four venues (including Saltram House) in June last year. A smaller version of that exhibition, called ‘Couriers of Taste’ opens at Danson House (Bexley Heritage Trust) on Friday. For this exhibition we focused on the idea of the 18th c trader. We thought you might like to see the exhibition – do let us know if you can make it this Friday 19th 2-5pm. We’d love to hear all about your work.
All the very best, Eliza and Lucy