Chapter VII / Osterley Walk
Osterley at Madras: III
One of the objects that were brought into England through Madras and other ports on the Coromandel coast were lacquered objects exported from China, made using a technique imprecisely known as Coromandel lacquering. This was a Chinese imitation of traditional Japanese lacquering techniques made specifically for export purposes. 31As you scan the images on the screen in front of you that seem so uprooted from their context and strangely placed within this English country house, look to the crest on its top. The screen bears the Child family coat of arms, thus confirming that this was a consequence of private trade undertaken by them, likely during the tenure of Francis Child II as director of the East India Company. 32
© author
We are now in 1798.
Madras witnessed the arrival of the last of the Osterley ships on its shores, the Osterley III, which had already completed two journeys to the port-town in the 1780s. To facilitate private commissions of the kind that we see here in front of us, exchange offices were built in the colonial provinces - much like the Royal Exchange in London. Within Fort St. George, the building that had been housing the offices of the Madras Bank transformed into an Exchange House for British merchants to freely and privately conduct trade in Madras and the Coromandel.33
More lacquered objects await on the next floor. Walk up the stairs. Enter the first room on your left - the room painted in blue. Six chairs carrying the crest of the Childs sit on one side of Mr. Child’s Dressing Room.
Walk to the porcelain cabinet.
On the bottom shelf is another collection of objects bearing the arms of the Childs, commissioned from China through the East India Company.
Osterley Park now holds within its collections 17 pieces of objects and furniture that bear the Child family coat of arms.34 These transactions bore witness to the penetration of an empire into foreign lands, and the objects now on display before you are testimony to the deep ties between the colonial corporation and the Childs, whose wealth sustained and adorned Osterley house for four centuries.35
The Osterley III returned to England in 1800. Three Osterley ships had traded for the Company and made about nine voyages to Madras over a period of 42 years. The Childs only owned Osterley I directly, but were indirectly connected to the other two through a partner of Child & Co - William Dent - who co-owned the second and third Osterley ships.36
With the marriage of the family heir Sarah Sophia Fane to George Villiers, the 5th Earl of Jersey in early 1800, the Child family became the Child-Villiers or the Jersey family and continued carrying its colonial wealth through generations.37
Walk down one floor, and enter the Eating Room on your right. Walk through the room and head to the Long Gallery.
Image: Armorial lacquer screen carrying the crest of the Childs, on display outside the Library at Osterley House © Tejesvini Saranga Ravi
31 Victoria & Albert Museum. “The influence of East Asian lacquer on European furniture”. Accessed August 5, 2024. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/east-asian-lacquer-influence?srsltid=AfmBOoojA9AHsdQtX_nfREojy6Z3qBvPoyVrlnCOS0aooi9fToVSK5o4
32 Sharma, Yuthika et.al. op.cit. Pg. 42.
33 V, Sriram. 2016. “Know Fort St George – 23, The Exchange Museum.” Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music. https://sriramv.com/2016/04/04/know-fort-st-george-23-the-exchange-museum/
34 National Trust Collections: Osterley Park and House. “Osterley Park's Chinese Export lacquer armorial screen - circa 1715-20”. Image no: 1503796
https://www.nationaltrustimages.org.uk/image/1503796
35 Sharma, Yuthika et.al. op.cit. pg.3-4.
36 Natwest Heritage Hub. “Sarah Sophia Child Villiers”. Accessed September 3, 2024. https://www.natwestgroup.com/heritage/people/sarah-sophia-child-villiers.html
37 Ibid. Pg. 26.