About the talk
In the reign of Charles II, Ham House famously underwent a substantial refurbishment under the supervision of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale. During this period of improvement, the Lauderdales filled their interiors with glimmering Chinese and Japanese lacquer, porcelain, and early examples of British japanning (furnishings that imitated East Asian lacquer). Drawing on new research into the Ham House collection, this talk will trace the journey of these items from Chinese and Japanese workshops via the developing ‘India’ shops of Restoration London into the courtly interiors of late Stuart Ham House. Using examples of surviving objects, this talk will connect the Ham House collection to a Restoration-era fascination with the societies of China and Japan.
About the speaker
Kerry Apps is a specialist in early modern history, with a particular focus on material culture and Tudor and Stuart England’s place in the wider world. She is a final-year AHRC-funded doctoral candidate. Her project ‘Imagining Asia: Global Goods in the Interiors of the Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, c. 1669-1683’ is a reassessment of the importance of East Asian objects, such as porcelain and lacquer, in the display of status by Carolean courtiers. She has contributed to National Trust projects tracing connections between UK properties and the Americas, and her PhD project, in partnership with the Trust, builds on her experience as a volunteer room guide at Ham House in her early twenties. In 2021-2022, Kerry completed an MPhil in early modern history at the University of Cambridge with a thesis focused on the development of British tobacco culture in the seventeenth century. Before this, she was a secondary school history teacher and head of department in London. She has written resources focused on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for AQA, Edexcel, Hodder Education, BBC Bitesize, and the Department for Education.
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