Amongst the many fascinating historical items that came to Knebworth House with The Cobbold Family History Trust charity when it relocated here in 2022, is over 500 very lovely and intricate papercuts made by Elizabeth Cobbold (1767-1824) of Holywells Park, Ipswich. 17th October is the bicentenary of Elizabeth’s death, and so I have been preparing a book celebrating this unique aspect of her legacy. Papercuts are but one arrow in her creative bow. This remarkable woman was also a poet, a novelist, a geologist, a character who appears in Charles Dickens’ “The Pickwick Papers” and – perhaps most impressively – stepmother to fifteen, and mother to an additional seven, Cobbold children.
Papercutting art is as old as paper, but although paper was first produced in China almost two thousand years ago, what we know as paper did not reach Europe until the 13th Century. Papercutting has never been a particularly English art, so Elizabeth’s very fine work stands out as special, and I think underappreciated. Looking at the example reproduced here, I marvel at the hours it must have taken to cut out each of these leaves – and how she found those hours with 22 children running around the house! But the result is very splendid.
Henry Lytton Cobbold
@HenryCobboldKH