Lot Essay
The fashion for 'Peking Paper' was popularised in the 1760s by Sir William Chambers (d.1796), architect and author of Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses etc., 1757. The craze for the Anglo-Chinois garden also encouraged its growth inside much of the interiors of houses, and by 1800 the fashion was led at Carlton House, London and the Marine Pavilion, Brighton by the Prince Regent. Vast quantities of wall-paper, sometimes amounting to some two thousand pieces, are recorded as being imported on a single East India Company ship in the late eighteenth century.