WHS Annual Lecture: Oscar Wilde, Wallpapers and the House Beautiful

PLEASE NOTE: The Wallpaper History Society AGM will be held at 12.30. All members are welcome to attend.

PLEASE NOTE: The WHS Annual Lecture will begin at 14.00.

Tickets are available for in-person attendance.

Oscar Wilde’s famous last words “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us must go” have become a by-word for all that was most ugly and vulgar about late-Victorian wallpaper design.

The self-proclaimed ‘high-priest of Aestheticism’, Wilde was never shy of pontificating on matters related to decoration and design. From his celebrated lecture tour of America to his promotion of Liberty, blue and white china and Japanese design, he was one of the most high-profile exponents of the late-19th century House Beautiful, a much-vaunted ideal to which many middle- and upper-middle class consumers aspired.

But although Wilde was always quick to condemn, he was frustratingly vague when it came to naming and describing the designs and products of which he actually approved. This lecture will explore the context for his lectures and writings to uncover his views on wallpapers and interior design and their influence on progressive taste.

Joanna Banham has over 25-years of experience in the arts, having curated historic wallpaper collections at the Whitworth Gallery and Arthur Sanderson & Sons, directing and creating public programmes, and working in a curatorial capacity. Joanna has worked for a number of renowned organisations such as the V&A, Tate Britain and the Royal Academy and is now the Director of the Victorian Society of America Summer School and lectures regularly for the Arts Society and many universities. She is a member of the Wallpaper History Society committee.

Host or Publisher Wallpaper History Society