Islamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, Surrey

Islamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, Surrey

Jules-Edmond-Charles Lachaise

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This ceiling design was created for an English country house called Deepdene, in Surrey, by the Parisian partnership of Lachaise and Gourdet. The firm was known for designing elaborate interiors for wealthy clients such as Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. Deepdene had been remodeled in an Italianate style during the 1840s by the banker Henry Thomas Hope (1808-1862), and the 1875 decorating campaign came at the behest of his widow, Anne Adele, who inherited the famous Hope Diamond from her husband. Lachaise and Gourdet ordinarily worked in a Renaissance Revival style, so this design is unusual for them. Its bands of stylized flowers were based on a page of "Persian" ornament in Albert-Charles- Auguste Racinet's L'Ornement polychrome of 1869. Presumably, the design was intended for a space where exoticism would have been deemed appropriate, such as a boudoir or smoking room. Deepdene was demolished in 1967, so we cannot be certain if the ceiling was ever installed.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Islamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, SurreyIslamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, SurreyIslamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, SurreyIslamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, SurreyIslamic Ceiling Design for Deepdene, Dorking, Surrey

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.