During 19th-century Victorian era England, craftpersons made a wide range of furniture and objects that were decorated with dark lacquer, mother-of-pearl, and paint.

The French term papier-mâché refers to pulped paper mixed with an adhesive and shaped in molds, but the 19th-century English material was made differently. It was created by gluing together sheets of paper over a form that could be further shaped with a lathe, rasp, or plane. In 1772, Henry Clay of Birmingham invented this technique and patented it that year.