CEILING OF THE GREAT CHAMBER, ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM (CIR. 1635).
Plate LXXI.
CEILING OF KING CHARLES' BEDROOM, ASTON HALL, NEAR BIRMINGHAM (CIR. 1635.)
As in the chimney-pieces, so in the ceilings, a favourite method of ornamentation was to introduce the owner's arms and badges. Of the examples given here only two, as it happens, illustrate this custom—the ceilings at Haddon (Fig. [161]) and Sizergh (Fig. [164]). The square panel at Haddon encloses a shield surrounded by a delicate strap-work border, and bearing the arms of Manners impaling Vernon, the work having been done by the Sir John Manners who came into possession of Haddon through his marriage with Dorothy Vernon, one of the co-heiresses of her father, Sir George, called the King of the Peak. At Sizergh one of the panels encloses a shield of arms, and others a badge.
167.—Pendants of Plaster Ceilings.
There is a very splendid ceiling in the gallery at Blickling, in Norfolk, wherein various badges are introduced, and another at Apethorpe, in Northamptonshire. Others might be named, but the custom was not so widespread in the case of ceilings as of chimney-pieces, perhaps owing to the plasterers having a number of stock designs from which they worked, and which, of course, would not include the arms of any special family. There seems no doubt that the plasterers did have such stock designs, but it is curious how seldom they are found repeated; hardly anywhere, indeed, can two designs be found which are exactly alike.
