For over three centuries, Castle Howard has stood in serene resplendence atop a prominent ridge, encircled by formal gardens, parkland, and lakes. Designed by Sir John Vanbrugh in the English Baroque style of his own creation, the fantastical building remains as celebrated today as it was in its earliest years: its domed central hall for centuries an imposing silhouette upon the surrounding horizon, and further consigned to immortality as the inanimate star of the 1980s adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Brideshead Revisited’.

The Castle’s archival records mention various ‘Chinese’ wallpapers previously installed onsite. As a design from de Gournay’s Chinoiserie collection that faithfully reproduces a surviving antique set of panels, the ‘Abbotsford’ was a fitting choice for the walls of Lady Georgiana’s dressing room. The design maintains the full drama and grand scale of its historic counterpart which hangs in the drawing room at Abbotsford House, Sir Walter Scott’s home in Scotland. The enchanting design is a spectacular display of densely packed, finely worked figures, animals and exotic birds amidst flowering bushes of peony, finger citron, prunus, camellia and chrysanthemum. Faithfully detailed, its botanical depictions reflect rare and highly prized plant varieties of 18th-century Oriental gardens — specimens that would have been largely unknown to Western eyes in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.