Gilt Leather at Gwydir Castle

Clare Taylor, a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University, is a specialist on historic British interiors and decoration. Drawing on her research into the decorative furnishings at Gwydir Castle in North Wales, she introduces readers to the long-understudied art form of gilt leather wall hangings. This work is part of a larger project, the first full investigation of the people, places and objects associated with gilt leather rooms across the British Isles, which was supported by a PMC mid-career fellowship awarded in spring 2020.

In 1908, Country Life featured two articles on the castle and gardens at Gwydir near Llanrwst in Caernarvonshire. Unusually for the time, the magazine devoted considerable space to describing the castle’s decoration and furnishings, noting that at Gwydir a ‘love of antiquity’ had been strong, as demonstrated ‘in the form not of leaving things alone, but of rearranging old material’. Amongst this ‘old material’ were the gilt leather panels hung in several rooms at the castle, described as ‘old Cordoba leather wall-hangings’.

Gilt leather has long been a neglected and little understood aspect of elite domestic interiors in Britain, often ignored in favour of other costly wallcoverings such as painted hangings or tapestries. The term ‘gilt leather’ is also something of a misnomer, since the hangings were created not with gold but with silver leaf, to which yellow varnish was applied to simulate the effects of gilding. Hangings were made using individual prepared animal skins, which could be both embossed from the reverse and stamped from the front and decorated with colours as well as metallic finishes. The decorated skins were then usually stitched together to create larger panels known as ‘pieces’, used either for hanging on the wall or to create screens and other decorative furnishings.

“Gwydir Castle”, Country Life, 27 June 1908, p. 1943.

Courtesy of Future Life Publishing Ltd.

“Gwydir Castle, Dining Room with gilt leather frieze”, Gwydir Castle sale catalogue, 1895. The National Library of Wales (247).

Courtesy of the National Library of Wales (public domain).

In the early modern period, the making of gilt leather was widespread, stretching from North Africa to Northern Europe, and by the seventeenth century it had reached the towns of the Dutch Republic as well as across the Channel to England. Dutch artists such as Pieter de Hooch included gilt leather hangings and screens in their still lifes and interior scenses reflecting new tastes for this luxurious household furnishing. In Britain, it was nevertheless often mistakenly referred to as ‘Spanish Leather’, and a room hung with gilt leather would be described as ‘The Spanish Room’ or even ‘The Cordoba Room’. This was still the case as late as 1971, when the designer and early historian of leather, J. W. Waterer, published his history of the material in Europe from 800 to 1800, entitled Spanish Leather.

Gwydir was unusual not only because of the number of rooms and items of furniture that were decorated with gilt leather, but also because its hangings showed a wide range of designs and manufacturing techniques. H. Avray Tipping, the Country Life correspondent who in all likelihood wrote the two articles in 1908, noted that in the breakfast room the leather had a gold ground pattern with birds, flowers and grapes hung as a frieze above the linen-fold panelling, a design he associated with Spain and with the traditional story that the hangings were acquired by Sir Richard Wynn (c.1588–1649) on a diplomatic mission to Spain in 1623. In fact, early photographs show that the vertical scrolling pattern was produced by embossing, and their design is now associated not with Spain, but with the Dutch Republic. By the time of the 1921 sale of Gwydir’s contents, the room had been renamed the ‘Oak Parlour’ and its gilt leather was described as a ‘rare and handsome Antique Spanish leather frieze, 3ft. deep, which is decorated in multi-coloured flowers and birds on gold ground’.

Gilt leather hangings were used in several rooms at the castle as an integral part of the decoration, characterised by colour, pattern and the ability to reflect light, in contrast to wood panelling. Photographs in a late nineteenth-century album show the ‘State’ bedroom and hall hung with formalised floral designs which, like the breakfast room, were used as horizontal friezes above the panelling or the wainscot. In the dining room, a further frieze was hung, stamped in a series of different patterns over small-scale repeating motifs executed in colours, silvering and gilt. The motifs alternate to create stripes, separated by narrow silvered bands. A wide strapwork border that hung below the ceiling was again executed in gilt and silvering, enhancing the material’s reflective qualities. This gilt leather’s origins were English, as evidenced by the repeating floral motifs (including a stylised rose) characteristic of known English makers.

In the sixteenth century, the Wynn family had established the family’s power base in the Conwy Valley and rebuilt Gwydir. In the seventeenth century, Sir Richard furthered the family’s connections at court as both groom of the bedchamber to the future Charles I and later as treasurer to Queen Henrietta Maria. Sir Richard’s aesthetic tastes were no doubt developed through his associations at court and were reflected in the decoration of his London house on the Strand. According to the inventory taken on Sir Richard’s death, gilt leather formed part of the decorative scheme in the house’s lobby, where twenty-two pieces of canvas were hung, described as ‘ombryded’ with gilt leather, meaning it was perhaps stitched or ‘embroidered’ onto the textile hangings.

Gilt leather could also be used for upholstery, and here it was frequently used to carry through a colour-scheme between wall hangings and seat furniture. A second space at the house on the Strand, the studio, which was set apart and perhaps even constituted another building, illustrates this adaptability. It was decorated with seven pieces of blue cloth hanging with a ‘list of guilt leather round about’, evidently forming a border. This colour scheme was designed to work with other furnishings in the room, including a blue tablecloth with a gilt border and two chairs upholstered in blue.

Evidence elsewhere suggests that gilt leather, like freestanding pieces of furniture, could be moved between houses, so it is conceivable that the hangings and other gilt leather objects may have been moved between London and North Wales. Although it is difficult to say how far the schemes at Gwydir reflected nineteenth-century or earlier arrangements, they certainly serve to illustrate the skills of gilt leather makers and the sophistication of the craft they pursued.