Imagining Asia: Global Goods in the Interiors of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, c. 1669-1683

This thesis examines the role of extra-European objects in the interiors of Ham House created by John and Elizabeth Maitland, the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. Whilst Ham House is well represented in art-historical scholarship, this refurbishment has been predominantly interpreted through European frameworks, emphasising the work of European craftsmen and artists, as well as architecture, art, and furnishings. The key contribution of this thesis is its approach to Ham House as a critical and often neglected case study of the impact of ‘India’ goods – from China, Japan, and India, amongst other areas – on seventeenth-century Britain. This thesis reconstructs the networks of supply and movement of these goods through the Lauderdales’ rooms at Ham, their apartments at Whitehall, and properties in Scotland, demonstrating the importance of ‘India’ goods across courtly interiors. The Lauderdales are positioned as diffusers of global goods and imitation lacquer objects, and early patrons of the ‘India goods’ retailers of Late Stuart London. The collection at Ham House is presented as an example of a japanning industry, predating the reign of William and Mary (1688 – 1704 and 1688 – 94) and the publication of Stalker and Parker’s Treatise of Japanning (1688). This thesis challenges narratives, predominantly drawn from literary studies, that have associated the display of Asian objects and materials in early modern Britain with femininity and superficial aesthetic pleasure. Drawing together reassessments of inventories, objects, spatial, and cultural analyses, it situates the Lauderdales’ interiors within a broader moment in Carolean Britain, characterised by intensified intellectual, political, and commercial engagement with Asia. Rather than marginal curiosities, this thesis asserts that Chinese and Japanese lacquers, porcelains, textiles, and birds, alongside British-made japanned furnishings at Ham House, operated as a coherent material and visual language through which the Lauderdales articulated global awareness, colonial ambition, and elite authority.