Interiors
Tapestry Tales, heavy with meaning and intention
A commission of six tapestries for William Knox D’arcy’s Dining Room at Stanmore Hall in Middlesex illustrates the story of the Holy Grail quest, as told in Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur. They took five years to weave and are considered among the most significant works made during the nineteenth century when romanticism was at its height and they paint a beguiling picture of lovely maidens and dashing knights in a style that was very appealing.
Le Corbusier – The International Style
Swiss born Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (1887-1965) was 29 when he went to Paris. Soon after his arrival he adopted his maternal grandfather’s name, Le Corbusier, as a pseudonym. He changed his persona from Jeanneret the small-town architect to Le Corbusier the world’s next visionary artist. He expressed a view that architecture had lost its way. He was convinced the bold new industrial age dawning required an audacious style of architecture. Who better to design it than himself. “We must start again from zero,” he proclaimed.
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.
Crystal Clear – New age Chandeliers both Colourful and Green
For seventeen centuries in Europe lighting was extremely difficult. It is hard for us to imagine how dark it was indoors in most houses, which were in the main only well lit on special occasions. Under normal light a room was seen in shadows, good wax candles were expensive, with tallow candles and rush lights smelly, quickly consumed or both. Until the invention of the ‘argand oil lamp’, and later ‘electric’ light, all classes and members of society were placed at a distinct disadvantage in ordering their daily lives.
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 Passion for Gothic Decoration
The decorative arts were never considered secondary by Augustus Welby Pugin. As an architect he might design the structure of a house, church or institution, but he conceived of the building, its fittings and furnishings as a ‘complete work of art.’
Fashion, is it more than a Frock?
From skinny self sacrificing super models to those demanding the use of ‘real people’, costume accommodates a desire to be noticed. It is the look at me, look at me syndrome, which has been in play for thousands of years. Today it collectively reflects a western society in which privacy has been stripped completely bare. But is fashion about more than a frock?
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.
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
What is a Mirror, more than just Glass?
The mirror, more than just glass, has occupied a unique place in his imagination as a site of the divine or demonic, of lucidity or madness. It is the ‘matrix of the symbolic’ and accompanies the human quest to know and understand our identity.
Postmodern – Pursuing the Past to Attain the Peak of Chic
Postmodernism (1970-1990) ranged from fashion to folly, from the luxurious to the ludicrous, from theory to theatre as it spawned out of control consumerism. It also grew a corporate design culture, which became encircled by money, wealth and power. Stylistically and realistically it all had to come to an end. Finally it collapsed under the weight of its own success.
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..
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