Woodblock print wallpaper

by NRF Media | Apr 11, 2024

Wallpaper panels illustrating scenes from Les Incas, ou la Destruction de l’Empire de Perou, written by Jean Francois Marontel (1723-1799). 

Doris Duke installed the panels at Rough Point by 1958.

These detailed woodblock prints are an incomplete set and part of a larger panorama made up of 30 individual panels. The wallpaper frames a narrative of an imagined past and tells the origin story of the Incan empire from the perspective of the Spanish colonizers. The creators of the wallpaper includes details of food, fashion, and fanciful architecture as part of the narrative showing the triumph of Western empiricism and reason over the “exotic” Incan peoples.  

Interestingly enough, Doris Duke did not install the wallpaper in the correct (or original order), so the story is now not linear. Instead, it ends at the beginning, with the birth of the Incan empire. 

20 panels of hand painted Chinese wallpaper

by nrf@admin | Jan 3, 2024

Chinese wallpaper was a popular luxury good made by skilled Chinese artisans for European markets beginning in the mid-18th century. From the late-19th century onwards, American collectors, like Doris Duke, acquired Chinese paper found in the European markets.  

One of these patterns on the wall of the Music Room was originally installed in Clyne Castle, an 18th century Welsh country house near Swansea. Doris purchased this wallpaper from an auction in Paris between 1958 and 1959 and had it installed in the Music Room sometime in the 1960s.