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Papier mâché architectural ornaments by Bielefeld & Hasdelden J C Loudon, An Encyclopædia of Cottage Farm and Villa Architecture (London 1846 [1833]), p 275. Dining room, ‘Killymoon’, Fingal Valley, Tasmania, c 1842-8, with a papier mâché centre flower: Miles Lewis. |
This is particularly important for large components, such as those making up the centre flower at ‘Killymoon’, Tasmania. The leading makers had been Jackson Brothers, but Bielefeld & Haselden, soon to be simply C F Bielefeld, rapidly overtook them. In 1835 Bielefeld published the first of his influential catalogues.4
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papier mâché centre flowers: ‘Killymoon’, Tasmania, c 1845, drawing room & dining room; ‘Wood Cot Park’, Victoria, c 1854-5; ‘Werai’, NSW, 1858. Miles Lewis. |
The commonest components are centre flowers, and especially where they are on timber ceilings you can be pretty sure that they are papier mâché. But they can also be used in the most elaborate decorative schemes, as was done by James Blackburn at Rosedale.
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'Rosedale' near Campbell Town, Tasmania, remodelled by James Blackburn, c1846: ceiling detail. Miles Lewis. |
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Cottage and church, from [C F Bielefeld], Portable Buildings, designed and built by Charles F. Bielefeld, Patentee, &c (London 1853), plates 8 & 5. |
Bielefeld also got into the business of making partitions for steamship cabins, and finally developed a waterproof form of papier mâché and a system for complete buildings. A number of these were sent to Melbourne in the early 1850s, though none survive today.5
Now James Blackburn had used papier mâché at Rosedale, and he owned not only a copy of Loudon’s Encyclopaedia, but also one of C F Bielefeld’s catalogues of papier mâché products. So if he designed Clarendon, as I argue, you’d expect to find papier mâché there. And you do. Virtually every element used at Clarendon can be traced to Bielefeld’s catalogue, Use of the Improved Papier-Mâché.6
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‘Clarendon drawing room centre flower, and Bielefeld catalogue illustration no 2637 |
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Clarendon drawing room, ceiling border: Helen Stitt. Bielefeld patterns 94; 127N370; 128N395 |
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Clarendon dining room, ceiling border: Miles Lewis. Bielefeld patterns 96, 196, 96. |
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‘Clarendon’ hall centre flower: Helen Stitt. Bielefeld pattern 45 |
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Clarendon’ hall cornice: Miles Lewis. Bielefeld patterns 126N366, 115N112 |
4. On the Use of the Improved Papier-Mâché, subsequently followed by his other well-known catalogues: in 1835 Gothic Ornaments, in 1843 his Architectural Ornaments, containing a thousand patterns, and in 1853 his Ornaments in Every Style. Bielefeld had made his own way in the industry from scratch, gradually assembling a number of cast metal dies of his own designs, until, by the time of his death in 1864, they numbered some hundreds and weighed fifty tonnes.
5. Later in the century another paper material was used for buildings, Willesden paper. I have not established what it was, but I suspect it was some sort of treated waterproof stiff paper or cardboard. At least one house of it was built in Melbourne, and one example is in Egypt, dating from the mid-1880s, is the soldiers' recreation rooms at Assovan, illustrated in an advertisement in J E M Vincent, The Australian Irrigation Colonies on the River Murray, in Victoria and South Australia (London, no date [c 1887]), p 38.
6. C F Bielefeld. On the Use of the Improved Papier-Mâché, &c. London, no date [c 1840?]..
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