Gardens
Arts & Crafts Movement – William Morris the Art that is Life
In England, during the second half of the nineteenth century, painter, writer, textile designer and social activist William Morris (1834-1896) became the spiritual leader of a revival in arts and crafts that encompassed all the visual arts, including architecture and interiors.
Palladio – In Pursuit of the Perfect House
A villa by architect Andrea Palladio was a place where the owners could feel happy, secure and content, which is after all, what most of us still require and aspire to, a place where one can cultivate the head, heart, body and the soul.
A ‘Compleat’ Gentleman, more than a leader of style
In London much of the development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was in the hands of aristocratic landowners. But were they ‘compleat’ gentlemen?
Downton Abbey, upstairs and down for the new gen and new age
From our London correspondent comes news about an exciting television series Downton Abbey, the most expensive British TV show ever produced. It is a great upstairs and downstairs story about life in an English Country House just prior to world war one, The dynamics of the people who live and work in Downton Abbey draw everyone into their emotional turmoil, one mostly internalized by its protagonists against their wellbeing. They are responding to the strict social and moral mores of their day which are under threat by massive societal change…
Louis XIV and the Advent of the Chateâu at Versailles
The French court by the beginning of the seventeenth century shifted from an ideal based on chivalry to one based on refined manners. This meant that instead of an economy based on feudal war it was now based on leisure and peace. The Chateau at Versailles in France is an amazing place to visit. In [...]
Châteaux in the Garden of France
In France the châteaux of the Loire are mostly connected in many people’s minds with royalty. This is because the men who built them were scarcely less wealthy than the king, often richer and usually heavily involved with him. The fine limestone the châteaux of the Loire were built from occurred naturally in a vast retaining wall that runs all along the right bank of the Loire Valley from Blois to Tours, where it is mingled with sandstone, millstone grit and potter’s clay.
Josephine at Château de Malmaison – Cultivating Style
Josephine became Empress of France in 1804 and for well over a decade she would play an important role in the development of plants and the evolution of botany.
La Casa di Villa – Dwelling under the Tent of Heaven
The precise location of heaven on earth has never really been established, but it could very well be a villa designed to cultivate the head heart body and soul
Archaeology, uncovering the past to help invent the future
“Everything around…the dark passages, the lifelike figures surviving from an older world… would conspire to produce a sense of the supernatural. It was haunted ground, and then, as now, “phantasms were about. The later stories of the grisly king and his man-eating bull sprang, as it were, from the soil, and the whole site called [...]
‘The Angel in the House’ meant a snug Victorian family life
Domestic cares of the household were expected to be kept hidden from the Victorian gentleman. He expected to arrive home to a warm welcome from his wife and children in a flutter of excitement to see him. He was comforted by the thought there was a cozy fire to warm him, a neat plain dinner with soup, a joint and two or three removes to accompany it. Order and quiet was valued above all. A poem “the Angel in the House”, written by Coventry Patmore about his wife Emily, was to have a huge impact..
Australia, Fantastic Flora – First Fleet to Federation
The British moved as free settlers to the exotic new shores of Australia because it held out a promise of rebirth, of beginning again, even though their particular vision of Eden was far more limited and austere compared to that of those with a Mediterranean imagination. All had faith though, that nature’s prodigality would produce a supply of all that was needed from a garden to exist, with little or no work on the part of the settlers.
A Chinese Garden – The Rhythm of Nature Refreshing the Heart
The Chinese attempted to recreate nature’s poetic wonders and create a garden that would be an outward expression of a man’s inner strength. It is highly contradictory because to be at one with the ebb and flow of the natural order of things everything is in constant flux and contradiction. So to go forward, you must step back, to gain you have to let go, and to win you must lose…Its an introspective philosophy, one that had a ‘belief in, and reliance on, human intuition’.
Domestic nostalgia – Jekyll and Lutyens, colleagues who didn’t need hide
The agricultural depression of the late nineteenth century removed land as the chief source of wealth in England. By 1901 money to pay for a country house had to be made in urban centres of trade or, in the countries that made up the British Empire. Building a house in the country made to appear as old and as venerable as the countryside itself was the ideal. Stylistically they looked back to the English vernacular tradition, which had been modified in response to the differing requirements of affluent clients. In this creative climate of possibilities architect Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944) and gardener Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) became names well known.
Heart, Soul and Spirit – Garden Art in Japan
You do not have to be a lover of Japanese culture to grasp some strong validity in its garden art forms. From the standpoint of pure design it is logical and honest. But, more than that, its bonds are stronger and its roots deeper than any we have known before in the realm of garden [...]
Bountiful Beauties of Paradise – Garden Art in Japan
At Byodo-in at Uji in Japan there is a remarkable survival of a tenth century sacred building, distinctively Chinese in style. Dedicated to Amida Buddha, surrounding it are the remains of a garden dating from the same period with deciduous trees, colour and flowers as an important element. It is like being in paradise.
CLASSIC: Artists & Artisans – Renaissance to Restoration
Classic – is the SECOND part of our four (4) segment course the Evolution of Art, Design & Style. It is available in video, ebook or podcast format and can be watched, read or listened to on your computer, iPad, Kindle or iPod.
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