Clare Taylor was appointed Staff Tutor in 2011. Clare is an historian of art and design, with a specialism in the history of the interior. She has a particular interest in textiles and wallpaper, and is a founder of the Wallpaper History Society.
Clare has given papers on her research to the Architectural Association; the Barber Institute, Birmingham University; the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, and to the annual conferences of the Association of Art Historians and the Design History Society.
Her doctorate, ‘Figured Paper for Hanging Rooms’: The manufacture, design and consumption of wallpapers for English domestic interiors, c.1740-c.1800 was examined in 2009. The thesis focused on paper hangings, an hitherto understudied material in comparison to other components of the Eighteenth century domestic interior. Drawing on recent theories of consumption and the nature of domestic space, the thesis used study of extant and reconstructed schemes, surviving papers and archival material to illuminate the material’s increasingly important role in decoration during the second half of the century.
More recently, Clare has been investigating the interpretation of the eighteenth-century interior in the first half of the twentieth century, presenting papers on attitudes to the exotic conveyed through study of museum and domestic interiors of the 1920s, and (to the first International conference on the Neo-Georgian) on the role of painted and printed decoration in disseminating taste for this style.
Clare previously worked both as an Associate Lecturer, delivering Undergraduate modules in Arts for the University in the South and South-West regions, and as a Senior Faculty Manager in the South region. As a Staff Tutor based in the London Regional Office she supports Associate Lecturers and students on an extensive range of Arts courses taught in the London region. These include courses in Art History, Creative Writing, Heritage and Interdisciplinary studies.
Contact: clare.taylor@open.ac.uk
“Painted paper of Pekin”: eighteenth-century Chinese papers in 1920s Britain’, in Huang, M. (ed.) The Reception of Chinese Art across cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, forthcoming)
‘Chinese papers and English imitations in eighteenth-century Britain’ , in Stavelow-Hidemark, E. (ed.) New Discoveries, New Research : Papers from the international wallpaper conference at the Nordiska Museet, Stockholm, 2007 (Stockholm: The Nordiska Museet, 2009) 36-53
‘Wythenshawe Hall and the Tatton family’ in Beard, G. (ed.) Country Houses and Collections, An Anthology (The Attingham Trust, 2002)
‘Eckhardts & Co and the supply of wall decorations for Shugborough’, Georgian Group Journal, xix (2011) 145-150
‘Reading the cards: trade cards as sources for studying the British Eighteenth-century wallpaper trade’, The Wallpaper History Review (2008) 29-32
‘The first Public Parks in Manchester’, Garten + Landschaft (2/1988) 27-30
‘The Division of the Wall: the use of wallpapers in decorative schemes 1870-1910’, Journal of the Decorative Arts Society, 12 (1988) 18-25
See also Open Research Online for further details of Clare Taylor’s research publications.
