The Quest for Nature – William Kent

There wasn’t really anything William Kent couldn’t turn his hand to. Architect, interior designer, painter and above all, landscape architect. In the words of one of society’s most famous and influential commentators of his time bon vivant, letter writer and Member of Parliament Horace Walpole, William Kent ‘ leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden’.

Art, Design & Style
Online Video Course for Members

Backed by sumptuous imagery and beautiful music the Evolution of Art, Design & Style On Line Video Course surveys, from antiquity to the contemporary age, the evolution of western architecture, gardens, interiors, including paintings and sculpture, furniture and furnishings, costume, jewellery, textiles, ceramics and beautiful objet d’art in chronological order of their development and in their relationship to other cultures – intellectually, philosophically and spiritually.

Art, Design & Style – A Window to the World

Starting on April 21 at the Culture Concept Circle we will be releasing Defining Civilization, the first two part session of our acclaimed arts appreciation course of study the Evolution of Art, Design & Style. Presented with sumptuous imagery and beautiful music, in an exciting new On Line Video format, we aim to open a window on a whole new world.

Making a Compleat Gentleman

West Wycombe Manor was set in a beautiful Park and the perfect setting for a man of means who also enjoyed the good life. Its colonaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England recalling perhaps many happy times spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of his friends country houses today it is a perfect film set for eighteenth century period films because it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of civilised life. Is it the perfect Temple to Taste of a Compleat Gentleman?

When Brisbane was Governed from Sydney

Brisbane,  the city big enough to get lost in and small enough to feel at home …Carolyn McDowall
© Author Phillip Black

Major-General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 1st Baronet, GCH, GCB, FRS, FRSE (1773-1860) was not content to rest on his fame as an astronomer and soldier. With the assistance of his friend, the Duke of [...]

Favourite Books…Andrea Palladio, The Architect in his Time

Professor Bruce Boucher’s scholarly and accessible work, Andrea Palladio, The Architect in his Time was first published in 1994  in a ‘user friendly version’…to fit comfortably into a suitcase or backpack for a quick trip to Vicenza, the scene of many of Palladio’s triumphant works in architecture.
Palladio, Boucher confidently tells us, ‘is arguably the most [...]

The Flight of the Egret

There are some in our society who are blessed with great creative gifts. Imagination is surely one, however it is one thing to have the ability to form images and ideas in the mind, especially of things never seen or never experienced directly, but quite another to connect those to the totality of real things in the world in order to convey knowledge or influence our perception of them.

Colour Considerations

All cultures on earth have particular perceptions of and about colour, which in its evolution has come to symbolize many things collectively and individually. It also has many variants so we could say it is neither black or white and has many shades of grey in between. In that respect one could say colour is a metaphor for life.

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.’