Wall panel with garden urns

Unknown artist

Along with painted wallpaper, the Chinese produced painted silk wall hangings for export during the eighteenth century. These coverings accounted for a small percentage of Chinese export textiles but they had considerable influence on the European imagination. "Chinese rooms" became essential features of European country house retreats. In fact, painted silk may have been a substitute for Chinese painted wallpaper, as suppliers could not manufacture enough paper to meet European demand. Painted pictorial wall decorations were entirely new products developed for the European market and unlike anything used in domestic Chinese interiors. Indian palampores and chintzes may have influenced this design of delicate flowering branches and assorted birds and insects.