George Salting (1835-1909) was one of the great art collectors of the 19th century.

Despite his vast wealth, derived from sheep stations in Australia, he lived modestly at his club and was generous in loaning out his collection. On his death he bequeathed superb early oriental ceramics to the Victoria and Albert Museum, rare prints and drawings to the British Museum and Old Master paintings to the National Gallery.

The residue of his estate went to his niece, Lady Katherine Binning. His contributions to Fenton House include the striking collection of Chinese blue-and-white Kangxi porcelain and the Japanese lacquered mirror frames pictures and trays in the Oriental Room.

Millicent Salting, Lady Binning’s mother, purchased important English and Continental porcelain figures in the years before the First World War. It is now possible to compare the output of the Bristol, Derby and Chelsea factories with those of Meissen, Hoechst and Frankenthal in the mid-eighteenth century in the Porcelain Room. She is also responsible for the collection of pretty painted satinwood furniture in the Drawing Room.

Lady Binning continued to purchase Meissen figures after inheriting her mother’s collection, adding at least two important figures of Harlequin. She also probably bought the Meissen service ware and the collection of nineteenth century Staffordshire pottery figures and animals. She was a fine needlewoman herself and amassed the beautiful Stuart needlework pictures.

Major George Henry Benton Fletcher (1866-1944) seemed an unlikely early music enthusiastic. His diverse careers included soldier, social worker and archaeologist. When he fixed upon collecting early keyboard instruments, he was motivated by a wider concern for the preservation of all significant works of art. Well before the early music revival had gained wide-spread popularity in England, Benton Fletcher advocated performing music on the instruments for which it had been conceived.