Auchterarder House Interior-general view of Drawing Room

Description Auchterarder House Interior-general view of Drawing Room

Date c. 1888

Collection Records of Bedford Lemere and Company, photographers, London, England

Catalogue Number SC 736917

Category On-line Digital Images

Copy of BL 9755

Scope and Content Drawing Room, Auchterarder House, Perth & Kinross (latterly Auchterarder House Hotel and presently a private house) Auchterarder House, a Neo-Jacobean mansion house designed in 1834 by William Burn for Captain James Hunter, was extended and lavishly refurbished in 1886-7 by the architect, Sir John James Burnet, for the railway locomotive magnate, James Reid. The architectural photographer, Harry Bedford Lemere, was commissioned to photograph the interior c.1888. The drawing room is dominated by an ornate yellow marble French-style fireplace with carved busts. Above, is an equally elaborate oak overmantel with an oval mirror flanked by gas lamps and candelabra, and topped by a broken pediment with two reclining figures and a cherub in the centre. The walls between the dado and the low picture rail are lined with silk panels whose pattern matches that of the material covering the furniture. Harry Bedford Lemere's photograph provides a unique record of a late Victorian drawing room, and shows that in the 1880s fashionable rooms were still being lit by candlelight in addition to gas lamps. The furniture shows an eclectic taste, with an inlaid Moroccan table (centre), a French table to the right of the fireplace, and Classical statuary. The furniture is heavily fringed and tasselled, and the customary large fern, perhaps one of the few plants that could withstands the fumes from the gas lamps, stands in the corner. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap