131. A Linen Panel.
132. Wood Panelling at the Bishop’s Palace, Norwich (temp. Henry VIII.).
133. Panel at Layer Marney, Essex.
134. Wood Panel in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The bare walls of mediæval houses had already been plastered in the better rooms, and the plaster had been ornamented in various simple ways by painted patterns. This custom was still retained to a certain extent in Elizabeth’s time. But the old fashion of wainscoting rooms, that is, panelling with oak, was considerably extended, and all the principal rooms were thus treated. The development of panelling is of much interest, but is of rather too intricate a nature to be traced here in any detail: suffice it to say that the earliest form of ornamental panels appears to be what is called the linen pattern, in which the surface of the panel itself was so carved as to bear a resemblance to a piece of stiffly and symmetrically folded linen (Fig. 131). This fashion was in vogue from the latter part of the fifteenth century, throughout the reign of Henry VII. and well into that of Henry VIII. With the advent of the Italian manner, the panels became carved with large and somewhat coarse arabesque work, fantastic animals were introduced, and, notably, human heads set in circular frames (Fig. 132). Another pattern peculiar to this period, and one which can neither trace a certain origin from anything before it, nor be traced through any direct descendant, is partly shown in the same illustration. It is formed of two curved ribs set back to back, but in this particular instance the circular panel is interposed between the upper and lower halves of the pattern. A panel from Layer Marney (Fig. 133) shows it more clearly, and it is just possible that in the panel at South Kensington (Fig. 134) we have the origin of this curious and fleeting form. Elizabethan panelling is less fanciful in treatment, its effect being obtained, when anything more elaborate than oblong moulded panels was introduced, not by carving, but an increased intricacy of framing, and occasionally by an inlay of coloured wood. This intricacy became more pronounced in Jacobean work, which on the whole is more complicated than Elizabethan. A fine example of early seventeenth-century panelling is to be seen at Calgarth Old Hall in Westmorland (Fig. 135), where the main panels are subdivided by an insertion of diamond shape, and the topmost tier is in every case arched. An invariable characteristic of panelling down to about 1630 is the comparatively small size of the panels, which seldom exceeded 2 ft. in their longest dimension. They offer in this respect a complete contrast to those which came into vogue about the middle of the seventeenth century. But, although the great amount of panelling which still survives in all parts of the country shows that it was universally adopted, yet the old-fashioned tapestry played an important part in the clothing of the walls, from the splendid pieces, brought from all parts of Europe, with which Cardinal Wolsey adorned his great palace of Hampton Court, down to the “smirched worm-eaten tapestry” of Borachio’s illustration, or the arras of the inn where Falstaff soaked himself in such an intolerable deal of sack.
