Wallpaper with a £7m sticking point
IT takes the cost of decorating to a new level... A 19th-century marchioness cut up a book of bird prints to add to wallpaper in a room at her stately home.
The volume intact it would now be worth, at the very least, £7million at auction
Had she kept the volume intact it would now be worth, at the very least, £7million at auction.
Isabella Hertford took her scissors to the tome in 1827, using 28 pictures from John James Audubon’s The Birds Of America to decorate the Chinese Drawing Room at Temple Newsam House in Leeds.
The book had been given to her by her lover the Prince Regent, later King George IV.
Isabella Hertford decorated the room in 1827
The room, along with the rest of the house, will soon be ready for reopening
It is such an extraordinary room
The room, along with the rest of the house, will soon be ready for reopening after a deep winter clean.
But wonderful though the wallpaper looks, the book would have been worth a fortune intact.
There are 119 known copies left in the world and one sold at auction for £7million in 2010.
Temple Newsam curator Rachel Conroy said: “It is such an extraordinary room, made all the more special because it was decorated by a former resident, Lady Hertford.”
The Chinese Drawing Room is in the Temple Newsam House in Leeds