Exhibition: “Taste, Design, and the Georgian Gentleman”

Thursday 25 June – Sunday 1 November, 11am-3pm

With evocative Grecian columns and ornate plasterwork, wander through an 18th-century Neo-classical staircase hall and gaze up at the intricate ceiling. See the largest surviving collection of 16 Lattimo glass plates painstakingly hand painted with Venetian scenes. The decadent Large Drawing Room showcases crimson red brocatelle wall hangings. Also in this room, feast your eyes on the unapologetically opulent Pietra Dura, an 18th-century ebony Italian casket lavishly encrusted with semi-precious stones.

Frequented by 18th-century writer and Gothic Revivalist Horace Walpole visit the Strawberry Parlour. Horace is believed to have slept in this ground-floor dark-panelled room while visiting his close friend and fellow connoisseur John Chute. Part of an Italian Old Master work, see a rare-surviving 17th-century sketch by one of the most celebrated painters in Italian art; Giovanni Francesco Barbieri or ‘Il Guercino’.

While you’re here, don’t miss the 17th-century portrait of Speaker of the House of Commons, Chaloner Chute due to undergo painstaking conservation over the next few years. Accessible for the first time ever on the ground floor of the house, the portrait’s last known journey off site was to the National Portrait Exhibition in 1866 – 160 years ago.