Tapestry and Upholstery
Stamped and embossed leather work is very conspicuous in domestic upholstery. In very early times the leather work, hung upon the wall in panels, took the place of more modern wall-coverings, and it was truly lasting. Much of the Cordovan leather is still very fresh in appearance, although several centuries old. Some of the panels hanging on the walls at South Kensington look remarkably fresh, and, richly decorated in colours, many of them are very effective. A special branch of this work was that devoted to the decoration of chair backs; stamped leather work for upholstery has been used in this country to a large extent, and some of the large oak chairs are still upholstered in the original ornamental leather produced by boiling the hides by a special process, so that the material could be readily moulded. In more modern times, however, the decoration is effected by embossing and stamping, supplementing such ornament by the use of an immense quantity of small brass nails, which are arranged in geometrical patterns or straight lines, oftentimes names and dates being included in the design.
In this connection also are screens of painted and gilt leather, chiefly of eighteenth-century manufacture. There is a good deal of this leather work to be found in old houses still, and much of it is capable of improvement by properly cleaning and touching up here and there so as to revive the old colours. Here and there hung up as wall decorations may be seen leather-covered boxes which were specially made to hold deeds; in the older examples there is a large circular piece below the narrow box, arranged so that the seal could hang in its proper position from the end of the deed; they were, of course, in common use before the days of safes and other methods of preserving parchments and property deeds. One in the Victoria and Albert Museum is stamped on the exterior with the description of the deed it originally contained, the inscription commencing thus: “the graunt of hen: the 5 to the abbot of rading.”