"This scarlet intruder": biography interrupted in the dining room at Tatton Park Mansion

Quince, Eleanor (2007) "This scarlet intruder": biography interrupted in the dining room at Tatton Park Mansion. In, Arnold, Dana and Sofaer Derevenski, Joanna (eds.) Biographies and Space: Placing the Subject in Art and Architecture. Routledge, pp. 55-72.

Abstract

In his work Unities Denis Diderot hypothesised that objects arranged within a space reflect the perception of the self. He suggested that items within a room functioned as words within a syntax, each of them working together to form sentences, to tell a story: the biography of the resident. When one item is replaced by something new or different this biography is interrupted; Diderot utilised the example of his new red robe purchased with sudden and unexpected wealth, which, by benefit of its ‘newness’, makes everything else look shabby and old. The robe is indicative of Diderot’s new, prosperous life and is at odds with the items which highlight his previous life of poverty: ‘all is in discord…there is no unity, …This scarlet intruder in my home’, Diderot is prompted to replace the rest of the room’s contents so that the space is coherent and so that his biography is rewritten.

Taking Diderot’s view of interior space as a starting point, this essay considers the layers of biography told to the visitor by the current display in the Dining Room at Tatton Park, Cheshire. Purchased in 1598 by Sir Thomas Egerton, the ‘Old Hall’ at Tatton underwent a series of rebuilds between 1760 and 1791. The result was a progression of modifications made to the interior and exterior space. Originally designated the Drawing Room, the space now known as the Dining Room was designed by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard for Samuel Egerton between 1760 and 1768. It was not until Samuel Wyatt’s alterations of 1785-88 that it became a dining room. The space is now dominated by a massive white marble fireplace, designed by Richard Westmacott and added in 1840. Subsequent members of the Egerton family added their marks; namely a mahogany dining suite (1812), electricity (1887) and Baccarat glassware (1911). Today the room, opened to the public by the National Trust in the 1960’s, is staged to display the results of 400 years of change including restored Rococo plasterwork, a sixteenth-century portrait of Sir Thomas Egerton the first owner of Tatton Park, green silk walls and floor-length scarlet velvet curtains (1960s).

The current arrangement of the Dining Room tries to represent generations of the Egertons, with historically disparate items sitting side by side. The constant interruption from these overlapping signifiers produces an incoherent syntax, a confusing biography. I shall identify the objects, or words, which are present within the space and consider the various life stories that are being put forward, and in turn, what they mean to the visitor, asking: whose story is really being told?

This record has no associated files available for download.

Contributors

Download statistics