The Victorian Observation of Indian Decoration

Illustration: Decoration from an Indian lacquer workbox, seen at the Great Exhibition, 1851.

British designers, and particularly those involved in the textile industry, had been either literally copying or producing Anglicised versions of Indian pattern work for generations. Although it was relatively standard practice to produce Indian inspired textile pattern work, it was perhaps not until the nineteenth century that the British began to develop an interest in the reasoning behind, both the popularity and the obvious superiority of Indian decorative pattern.

As the discipline of science procured for itself a veneer of respectability and, to a certain extent at least, a relatively unbiased analysis of a whole range of subjects, the world of the decorative arts, particularly from an historical perspective, was bound to eventually become included in nineteenth century scientific analysis.

A number of individuals tried to make sense of an often bewildering entanglement of decorative pathways. These pathways joined most, if not all of human cultural diversity, into a confusing network of symbols, styles and creative eras. Much of the early nineteenth century information tended to rely on a typically Eurocentric approach to decoration, with most of the decorative eras of Europe either spontaneously appearing fully grown, or lending themselves to cultures outside of the continent. Therefore, European architecture, design and decoration often found itself being put forward as the influencer of what was deemed to be lesser cultures on the periphery of Europe. The fact that often the opposite was true, took some time to percolate within the European consciousness, and to be honest there are still many in Europe who believe in the Eurocentric perspective of events, whether historical, political, religious, or indeed decorative.

Illustration: Indian ivory inlay decoration, seen at the Great Exhibition, 1851.

That Europe and particularly Britain had much to learn from the perspective of design and decoration began to be consistently put forward by a number of critics, some of whom had practical experience in the decorative arts and some who didn't. Criticism of contemporary British decorative arts output gained pace during the 1840s, but it was perhaps the event of the 1851 Great Exhibition in London which really made a convenient public forum in which to discuss British decorative arts as compared to the rest of Europe. However, considering the international aspect of the Exhibition, more particularly to those cultures outside of Europe, many of which were considered little more than colonial appendages of Britain, the discussion and analysis could be expanded beyond Europe.

India was particularly highlighted by critics during and after the Exhibition. For many it was the first time that they had seen Indian products in such detail and on such a scale. Of course, when talking of 'India' we have to be aware that as far as the British were concerned when they referred to India, they were talking of their influence over what is now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. This also meant that decorative work displayed would be both Hindu and Muslim based and in that respect a cultural range of Indian work would have been seen. However, it is also true that much of the accumulated work shown at the Exhibition under the banner of India had been supplied by the British East India Company as well as by individuals and therefore as the old Mughal Empire was their particular power base much of the decorative display work had a Mughal and therefore Muslim heritage.

Illustration: Decoration from an Indian lacquer workbox, seen at the Great Exhibition, 1851.

Britain had always had, and to some extent still does have, a fairly peculiar relationship with India. Although there is a certain amount of complexity in the relationship which spans a number of generations, there is something to be said for the idea that Britain in its struggle to deal with its own inferiority when seen against the seemingly unchanging and age-old Hindu cultural traditions, or the rich cultural world of the Islamic Mughal Court, found a way of coping with its own inferiority by adopting a form of projected superiority. Many in the Mughal Court in particular saw much of the British blunt acts of perceived superiority as regrettable and painful to watch, and there are lots of amusing stories of Mughal Emperors inviting the British to their Court hoping that the civilised nature of the atmosphere might well help to educate the British in refining their nature.

As to decoration, the analysis of individuals such as Owen Jones helped to formulate, not so much why Indian decorative work was so successful and popular, although this was an important part of the understanding of India and its decorative history, but more a case of why it was consistently of such a high standard and why it seemed to work on so many levels and in so many disciplines without fail. The practical and technical analysis of Indian decoration shows clearly that much of it consists of pattern work that is devoid of illusion. This means in fact that Indian decorative detailing whether for architecture, glass, ceramics, wood, metal or indeed textiles lacks shadow or any element of depth. This was shown to be diametrically opposite to much of European decorative work of the last three or four hundred years.

Illustration: Inlay decoration of an Indian hookah, seen at the Great Exhibition, 1851.

Richard Redgrave in his supplementary report to the Great Exhibition, produced in the following year 1852 stated that Indian:

'...ornament is always flat and without shadow; natural flowers are never used imitatively, or perspectively, but are conventionalised by being displayed flat and according to a symmetrical arrangement; and all other objects, even animals and birds, when used as ornament, are reduced to their simplest flat form.'

Redgrave was not merely casually observing the main aspects that made up Indian decorative pattern work, he was in fact trying to underline why he and others felt that this form of decoration was infinitely superior to anything produced by Europe in the last four hundred years and certainly that of contemporary Britain. It was felt that Indian designers and decorators, rather than suffering from a lack of knowledge of perspective or a three-dimensional viewpoint in art, had instead a superior knowledge and skills base as far as art and design were concerned, specifically because they did not use perspective and illusion. They had an intrinsic and long-term understanding of materials and surfaces, which included their decorative strengths and weaknesses, a technical and practical ability that Britain had lost sometime in the early renaissance. That it was needed for the British to rediscover this innate ability through the Indian decorative arts, was seen as paramount to a successful domination of decoration both in Europe and internationally.

Illustration: Indian cashmere covering, seen at the Great Exhibition, 1851.

Not all were convinced that Indian decoration could help point the way for contemporary British design, and certainly many had difficulty with the concept of Indian decorative arts being seen as superior to that of the British. Many of the British who resided in India itself were prone to see anything Indian as inferior to the British way of life, but as already stated there is always the potential to start believing in your own superiority when it is stressed enough times. That that superiority was inherently self-delusional, and a delusion that was purposely projected as an overall confidence on to those who were being ruled, is an aspect of the British Empire that is only now beginning to surface.

More damning perhaps is the attitude of critics such as Ruskin who was very vocal in his condemnation of non-European art, design and decoration. He was known to have dismissed the Indian decorative arts on a number of occasions which is interesting as many of the followers of Ruskin and particularly those who became part of the British Arts and Crafts movement, were keen to introduce some of the more fundamental aspects of Indian decoration, particularly the aspect of the removal of any form of shadow or depth to pattern work. Although William Morris rarely praised the role that India played within contemporary nineteenth century decoration, particularly within textiles, it is clear that his work follows closely the tenets of Indian decoration. Although he would rather have given the praise to European medievalism, as indeed would Ruskin and many of the Arts and Crafts followers, there is little doubt that India had a long and consistent effect on British decoration. This became acute during the Great Exhibition of 1851 and thereafter was analysed and projected onto at least a certain element of Britain's decorative work, particularly in the form of textiles. Perhaps the British debt to Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, at least in the form of decoration and pattern, should be expressed a little more often than it is.

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Portrait of a lady in Nizamabad: Isabel Kerr. Wellcome Library Item of the Month.

Photograph by G.M. Kerr, 1926. Wellcome Library no. 726380i.

This photographic print is one of the apparently few and elusive portraits of Isabel Kerr (1875-1932), a Methodist missionary who founded the Victoria Treatment Hospital for people with leprosy at Dichpali, near Nizamabad in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.

Born Isabel Gunn, she had graduated MB ChB at Aberdeen in 1903, and arrived in India with her husband, the Rev. George McGlashan Kerr, in 1907. They noticed the frequency of leprosy and the unsatisfactory treatment of its victims, and having resolved to do something about it, received a donation of 10,000 rupees (£590) from a citizen of Nizamabad, Narsa Gowd, towards a leprosy hospital. In 1913 a gift of 60 acres of land at Dichpali (also called Dichpalli), a village ten miles down the railway line from Nizamabad to the city of Hyderabad, was received from the Nizam of Hyderabad. With further funds from Narsa Gowd and others, the hospital opened on 18 April 1915. [1]

The hospital expanded rapidly owing to demand, and by 1921 it consisted of 120 buildings. Further buildings were added in 1923 when the Minister of Finance of Hyderabad, A. Hydari (later Sir Akbar Hydari) opened more new buildings, again paid for by the Nizam. The running costs from 1910 to 1944 were subsidised by the Mission to Lepers, from 7 Bloomsbury Square, London (since 1965 known as The Leprosy Mission).

In 1920 Isabel Kerr adopted the treatment using oil of the chaulmoogra tree, which she learnt from Ernest Muir in Calcutta. It is presumably a chaulmoogra injection (excruciating for the patient) that is shown in the photograph. An Indian variation of the treatment used the related hydnocarpus plant, which was cultivated along with cinchona in the Nilgiri hills.

At Dichpali there was no shortage of patients, but in too many cases they were the wrong kind for treatment. The Rev. G.M. Kerr described how, in the early stage, when the disease was infectious and treatment would be most effective, patients would hide their symptoms. Only much later would they go for treatment, when the hydnocarpus oil could do nothing to undo the mutilations caused by the bacillus decades previously. Kerr compared the treatment-after-the-event at Dichpali to a clifftop where people were in danger of falling off: it would be better to install a rail at the top than a casualty station at the bottom. To encourage people to be treated in the early stages of leprosy, the Kerrs therefore opened an outpatient clinic in Hyderabad in 1928, with the desired effect: "Students from the colleges, clerks from their offices, and Government officials from their posts" all flocked to the clinic. [2]

A second photograph in the Wellcome Library (below) shows yet another foundation-stone laying ceremony, this time in 1935.

Wellcome Library no. 749712i

The foundation stone was laid this time by Amena, Lady Hydari. By this time Isabel Kerr had died: she died in 1932, aged 57. [3] The Rev. George McGlashan Kerr continued to run the hospital after her death, until his retirement to Scotland in 1938. His archive including three photographs is in Edinburgh University. He died in 1950.

Isabel Kerr was described as "modest, shy and diffident, and reluctant to speak in public". Hence no doubt the lack of photographs of her: the opposite of the much-portrayed Albert Schweitzer, renowned for his skilful use of publicity.

As a Methodist, Isabel Kerr was doubtless familiar with, and motivated by, the words of John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism:

"Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can."


[1] Dermott Moynahan, The story of Dichpalli, London: The Cargate Press, 1949, is the source for most of what is written here. It is a revision of his earlier book The lepers of Dichpali, London: The Cargate Press, 1938. In the earlier edition but not in the later, the present photograph of Isabel Kerr is reproduced with legend "Dr Isabel Kerr giving an injection" (facing p. 28) 

[2] Rev. G.M. Kerr, 'Tackling a great social problem: the fight with leprosy', The foreign field (of the Wesleyan Methodist Church), April 1926, pp. 155-158 

[3] Her obituary in The Lancet reads as follows (in its entirety). "Isabel Kerr, M.B. Aberd. The death is reported from Dichpali, the Leper hospital settlement outside Nizamabad, of Dr. Isabel Kerr, the Scottish medical missionary, who has made this institution the outstanding centre in South India for the treatment of leprosy, and for training in diagnosis and treatment. Born at Fochabers-on-Spey in 1875, she graduated in medicine at Aberdeen in 1903, and went to India with her husband, the Rev. George M. Kerr, who is superintendent of the Wesleyan Mission Station at Nizamabad. She had charge for 12 years of the mission hospital there until the foundation of the Dichpali Home, where husband and wife have worked devotedly ever since. In 1923 she was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind gold medal in recognition of her services." (The Lancet, 31 December 1932, pp. 1460-1461) 

Portrait of John Wesley: mezzotint by J. Faber after J. Williams, 1743. Wellcome Library no. 9621i.

The Influence of Persian Decorative Creativity

Illustration: Persian manuscript page.

The influence of Islamic decoration on the decorative arts of Europe has been both fundamental and long-standing. From the early medieval period onwards the influence on European surface pattern in particular, has been an important element both as an inspiration and as a developmental tool. The interaction between southern Europe and North Africa for example, proved to be creatively inspiring, producing an inter-locking cultural mix of Islamic, Classical and Christian motifs and pattern work that was to produce some of the most important developments in textile pattern work.

By the nineteenth century one of the main areas of intrigue and fascination for Europeans involved in the decorative arts was that of Persia, modern day Iran. The history of the decorative arts in Islamic Persia was considered by many Europeans to be of fundamental importance, with highly sophisticated decorative work that could do nothing but be inspirational to designers in Europe. The extension of the Persian culture into Northern India through the Moghul Empire had proved to be particularly inspirational to the British who came into direct contact with the cultural heritage through their assimilation of India. It was this combination of Persian and Northern Indian decorative work that proved to be so inspirational to a number of British designers.

Illustration: Indo-Persian manuscript border designs.

Decorative pattern work in Islam came in many forms and tended to be spread across most of the decorative art disciplines. It was therefore used on an inspirational level within European industries that supplied the growing interiors market. Ceramics and textiles proved to be particular beneficiaries in the latter half of the nineteenth century with both disciplines producing a formidable amount of work, both obvious and subtle, with Britain being particularly susceptible to the style.

Islamic decoration tends to be perceived as following two main themes geometric and floral, and while this is true to a certain extent, there is a complexity to the culture, one that has incorporated a number of different regional and cultural themes, that makes this too simplistic, but sometimes useful when dealing with the larger themes of pattern work. Interestingly, of the two perceived themes, the British in the nineteenth century tended more towards the floral than the geometrical, despite the persistent persuasion of such critics as Owen Jones who saw the fundamental and varied building blocks of the geometrical as a perfect vocabulary for an endless complexity of pattern.   

 Illustration: Persian manuscript page.

All of the illustrations shown in this article are facsimiles of historical Persian manuscripts that were reproduced for a European audience to both marvel at and see as being potentially inspirational. In some respects, they were produced as an historical and cultural evaluation of Persia, but they were also an obvious portfolio of possible decorative techniques for use in contemporary European pattern work. The percentage of active inspiration depended on both the individual designer and the company involved. William Morris for example, was both intrigued and inspired by Persian and Moghul decorative qualities and techniques, but did not actively copy any of the results that he came across in his research. However, his surface pattern work in both printed textiles and carpet design did use some of the general techniques that could be found in Persian floral decoration. It is sometimes not always the direct approach to observational inspiration that is the most useful; often it is the slow and almost sub-conscious result that proves to be the most rewarding. However, others were more aware of the direct allure of what was termed as the 'Orient' and its potential for profits, and therefore a much closer observational inspiration was chosen.

Whichever path proved to be the most profitable, the creative or material, or even a combination of both, Persian and Moghul elements seeped into the decorative format of nineteenth century British decoration. So much so that the imported style can be seen as being an intrinsic part of many of the formats and disciplines that made up the decorative arts, from textiles to ceramics, and from illustration to metalwork. Some of the decorative inspiration is practically and blatantly obvious as in the output of Liberty for example, while some is much less so and forms a foundational level, as in the case of Morris and Co. 

 Illustration: Persian manuscript page.

However, no matter what the level of inspiration, it is fascinating to evaluate the influences and cultural overlaps that are always such a part of the history of decoration. It is intriguing to see the historical possibilities that may have been produced between the creativity of two different cultures in different parts of the world. The creative connections formed by Britain from that of Iran, many of which were not necessarily consciously achieved, show how important this form of cultural fermentation has been in the development of the decorative arts in general and in that of Britain specifically, an island that has always had a natural tendency to absorb decorative formats, embellish even transform them and then redirect them for both domestic and external markets. It is this form of creativity that perhaps lies at the heart of Britain's nineteenth century relationship with both Iran and its Moghul extension in British India.

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