Reading as a Gentleman and an Architect: Sir Roger Pratt’s Library, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 53 (2009): 15-50. (original) (raw)

A. Aymonino and M. Guerci, The refurbishment of Northumberland House: Craftsmen and interior decoration in mid-eighteenth-century London Town Houses

S. Avery-Quash and K. Retford (eds), The London Town House, Bloomsbury, London, 2019

Based on its authors' longstanding interest in Northumberland House, this chapter develops out of a recent study of its mid-eighteenth-century refurbishment. Starting from a summary analysis of the team of craftsmen involved at the house, it suggests how they were involved at other contemporary aristocratic London palaces, always meeting the patrons' demands for a peculiarly British mixture of Rococo decorative patterns and Palladian orthogonal logic in interior decoration. The question is whether these craftsmen represent a circle that responded to the demand for a new French taste in interior decoration, fashionable among Francophile patrons of the likes of the Northumberlands and, indeed, de rigueur with Frederick, Prince of Wales. This chapter relies on an appendix, thematically organized, of all the craftsmen, builders and architects involved at Northumberland House (highlighted in bold in the main text), where biographical, bibliographical and archival information as well as cross references between the craftsmen are given in full.

John Carr of York and hidden architectural histories

2013

The purpose of my study is to explore previously overlooked and therefore hidden eighteenth-century architectural histories using the lens of John Carr of York (1723-1807). This can help elucidate our understanding of, and challenge accepted ideas around, architectural histories that traditionally have a London based, stylistic, gendered or elitist class bias, coupled with an exclusive view of the practice of architecture based on the great drawing offices of premier architects such as Carr’s peers Robert Adam and Sir John Soane. By using John Carr of York in this way we can see that there are alternative architectural histories that exist in conjunction with and not in opposition to, these established ideas. In particular, the hidden architectural histories I focus on include the role of women as architectural practitioners and patrons, the accuracy of the previously held view of who eighteenth-century architectural patrons were and subsequently the influences upon them, and the ro...

William Newton (1730-1798) and the development of the architectural profession in north-east England

2013

This thesis examines the emergence of the professional architect in the provinces of eighteenth-century Britain, drawing upon new research into the career of William Newton (1730-1798) of Newcastle upon Tyne. Section I assesses the growth of professionalism, identifying the criteria that distinguished professions from other occupations and their presence in architectural practitioners. It contrasts historians' emphasis upon innovative designs by artist-architects, such as Sir John Vanbrugh and Robert Adam, with their absence from the realisation of their designs. Clients had to iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been written without the generous support of the many owners of eighteenth-century buildings who have allowed me to examine their homes, workplaces, and places of worship, patiently answered my questions, provided access to sources in their archives, and allowed me to take photographs.

Social Pretensions in Architecture and Ancestry: Hall House, Sawbridge, Warwickshire and the Andrewe Family

The Antiquaries Journal, 1996

That architecture makes social statements is obvious in grand buildings from Norman castles to country houses. In smaller houses, such statements are often muted by our ignorance of their historical context and their date. This paper examines a small but sophisticated medieval house in which the combination of precise dating and informative documentation surmounts simple architectural analysis, to reveal something of its social importance to the family who built it. In the early nineteenth century, the status of Hall House, Sawbridge, was the lowest possible. It belonged to the Sawbridge Overseers of the Poor and was rented to families receiving parish support; later it became farm labourers' cottages. Most of the stages in the decline of the elegant medieval house to this lowly state can be documented, and links established to the only family in fifteenth-century Sawbridge with pretensions to sophistication. These clues lead to the identification of John Andrewe as the builder ...

Early Modern Elite Residential Architecture: Patrons as Architects

The early modern period of architecture was directly influenced by the rise of wealthy elites who gained power and status through their riches to create architectural design that reflected their high-class positions in society. The patrons of the early Renaissance through the Baroque years produced residences that became objects of communication through personal touches that displayed individualized details about the patron of the home. In Bourges, France, the House of Jacques Cœur (1443-51) was an example of the French courtyard house that was altered by its patron to contain ornamental elements throughout the estate that reflected Cœur’s profession, country, and king as well as altering design portions of the home to better serve the public and private functions of the patron’s family and his guests. In the sixteenth century, Hardwick Hall (1590-97) in Derbyshire, England was built for the Countess of Shrewsbury, Elizabeth Hardwick. The English country style home featured large lavish windows that were atypical of the architectural style and revealed the vast wealth of the Elizabeth. In addition, the Countess desired modification of the hall location within the plan of the home that better suited the female patron and her abilities to monitor her residence. By the seventeenth century, however, the scope of self-fashioning in architecture had expanded to the grounds surrounding the residence. Vaux le Vicomte (1653-61) was commissioned by Nicolas Fouquet as a private French chateau garden house that reflected the superior power of the men of France through seemingly infinite perspective views of the residence and gardens. Additional elements of Fouquet’s coat of arms, squirrels (“fouquet” in French), and his motto, “Quo non ascendant?” were seen as ornamentation throughout the design of the interiors of the home. While many scholars have studied the House of Jacques Cœur, Hardwick Hall, and Vaux le Vicomte and noted that all were elite residential housing of the early modern period that reflect the influence of wealth and patron authority over architectural design, a close and careful analysis using scholarly books and articles shows that in the end, regardless of the patrons’ self-assertion through architecture, the supremacy of the monarchs of the time had ultimate dominion over architectural representation of elites which limited and controlled structural presentation under the crown’s rule.

Architecture and Élite Culture in the United Provinces, England and Ireland, 1500-1700

This book juxtaposes perceptions of castles in past and present times in The Netherlands, England and Ireland. The first half of the book queries how scholars (mainly archaeologists), tourists and museum curators read and present castles and country houses. A second part moves into the past, the 16th and 17th centuries, and looks at both the architectural heritage itself, and at contemporary references in diaries, letters and poetry to these houses. Drawing on a variety of sources and based within archaeology, heritage studies, art-history, literary studies and anthropology, this study examines themes as wide-ranging as architecture and the Classical culture of friendship, Romantic ruin sensibility, past senses of privacy, and ‘God in the house’.