“Jo is like a breath of fresh air guiding us all in fashion and style. Her passion is contagious – she wants us all to feel and look the best we can… She’s the best!” said Dimity Hodge, Head of Women in Leadership at Westpac.

On The Culture Concept Circle you will find many free posts to choose from about art, both visual and performance, antiques, design, fashion, ab fab events, music and society – past, present and future. Costume is all about who we are…where we have been and where we are going. It is a footnote to culture, and remains both a changing and eternal form of human expression.

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3. What Is A Treasure in a Library and Life

Spending a rainy day reading in bed is certainly my idea of luxury. I have always imagined that one day I may very well end up like the ‘poor poet’ in one of my favourite, charming ‘Beidermeier paintings’ by Carl Spietzwig. In my room, snuggled up with just my bed and books around me. Although hopefully, I won’t need an umbrella like he has, to stave off the leaks when it rains.

My God of Double Happiness his 'Mona Lisa' smile quite grabbed my attention years ago when he was part of a collection belonging to a friend. It's the crinkles around his eyes that drew me in.

In a way surrounding myself with books has been part of my looking to value myself and to conserve my health and wellbeing for a very long time. They have also aided my life’s journey and over the years have practically helped me to plan many adventures with my family, both at home and overseas. For thirteen years they were also freely available to students of The Academy (Academy of Design and Decorative Arts) who spent many a happy hour browsing and researching from them in the Art Deco Academy space in Macquarie Street at Sydney (1992 – 1999) and in The Turret teaching space in the precinct of St John’s Cathedral at Brisbane (2000 – 2005).

When, a few years ago, I was put into a position of having to sell off this fine art, design history and decorative arts library, which had been put together lovingly over forty years, it was like tearing out both my heart and soul. One of the few people who understood why I was so distressed was my eldest son, also a bit of a Bibliophile, albeit on a smaller scale these days. He is collecting books on a Kindle instead of in a bookcase. Certainly much easier to take with you when you move. After making all the arrangements to send them off at the last minute I couldn’t bear to see them all go, because they were so important to my security. Irrational I know, but there it is, I am only human. And I freely admit they were, and are my ‘Linus’ blanket. My books, and my wonderful ceramic God of double happiness are my home, and where they both are you will find me also.

So, the night before they were leaving, and because I wanted to survive well I grabbed back a small cross referenced collection, which included some renowned for their scholarship,  some that placed form above content, some that were old, some rare, and some first editions, as well as one or two from private presses and the like.

For a long time they were unable to be unpacked but they are now and surround me daily in my working space at Melbourne, along with my ceramic God of Double Happiness and a large tapestry that I love. The ‘God’ is really special as he once belonged to a friend of mine whose erudition I admired. He used to visit me often to share his prodigious knowledge. When he passed on into that big library in the sky I secured him at auction.

Being a bibliophile is not only about heartbreak, it is also about happiness too. The ‘smell’ of books en masse has for me at least, has always been very alluring. Especially since many childhood hours spent in the Randwick Municipal Library and later the State Library in Macquarie Street at Sydney.

I have always loved those books ‘bound in Morocco’, a tradition associated with binding books with the skin of goats formerly grazing the grass at exotic Morocco. And what about those with pure gold protecting the edges of their beautiful hand made paper from dust.

For me, and I suspect for many other members of the ‘baby boomer’ generation, part of the process of having an association with books was browsing through the bookstores. Such special places. I have particularly enjoyed hunting about in shops that specialized in antique and out of print books.

Frequent visits to Melbourne were a joy and found me headed straight for Kay Craddock’s basement bookstore on chic Collins Street, which was right next door to the fabulous flagship emporium, Georges, now only a memory too.

Happily I can report from Melbourne, for those that may not know, Kay is now back in her book basement following renovations to the building.

Browsing in the rare division and buying at Berkelouw’s amazing book barn in the Southern Highlands of NSW was an annual joy all through the ’80′s and early 90′s. Often when purchasing old and rare books I would find a personal photo, a cutting from a newspaper, or a letter from a previous owner that had been filed away carefully and then passed along to me. Special.

I remember being in Berkelouw’s store at Paddington in Sydney in the early 90′s and discovering a rare set of all the novels by the controversial (woman dressed as a man) author George Sand (1804 – 1876) brilliantly bound in colourful Morocco. At the time I so wished they could be mine, but they were outside my budget so I had to decline. I was always ‘tough’ with myself about the budget. They were of special interest though and I enjoyed the opportunity to view and handle them wearing white gloves. Not long before this had happened I had seen the movie Impromptu (1991), which starred Australian actor Judy Davis as the writer who dressed like a man, George Sand with Hugh Grant as Chopin and Julian Sands as Franz Liszt. Just brilliant.

Incredibly a few nights later I went out to Sydney airport to pick up my husband from off the last flight from Melbourne. In those days it was easy to go through and wait at the door for the passengers to come off the plane. As I was standing there alone, at about 10 pm amazingly, up came Judy Davis.

Judy Davis as George Sand, Impromptu

Ms Davis was there to also pick up her husband Colin Friels from the same plane. So I plucked up the courage to talk to her and we passed pleasanteries. I told her all about my find and the delightful set of Sand novels in the Paddington store and said that if anyone should own them, she should, having played Sand so brilliantly. When I went back a few weeks later they were gone and I have always wondered if they ended up in her bookcase. It’s a mystery.

Then there is a delightful poem I discovered tucked up in a book about glass. Called Chinoiserie, it was written by someone who remains anonymous.  Click the red link if you would like to read it.

There were constant delights when plotting with a book dealer and friend James Larsen, who was an enthusiastic and important conduit in my search for additions to my ever expanding collection. He would ring out of the blue from unexpected places to report his findings. I remember it took him years in the eighties to find a copy of Nancy Mitford’s large ‘coffee table’ size book of the biography of Madame de Pompadour for me.

Then he endeared himself forever when he also found the biography of Louis XIV The Sun King in the same large edition. James Larsen specialized in finding rare and out of print editions, crime, science fiction, history, biography, and children’s books and still does, in his delightful bookstore at Exeter in NSW. These days he’s also handily ‘online’.

The longest time we spent was about ten years to find a pristine copy of the limited edition of the very rare ‘Castiglione at the Court of the Chinese Emperors’. In all that time I never gave up hope one would turn up as another Bibliophile joined that larger library in the sky. Then out of the blue he rang from deep in one of the states in the U.S.A. to say he had found it and to confirm its purchase.

Remembering that someone else had preserved, and passed a book along to me was what eventually got me through my personal crisis over losing most of my treasured library. I had to keep reminding myself it was all about being a conservator and safeguarding someone else’s imagination, which as 20th century scientist extraordinaire Albert Einstein reminded us, is more important than knowledge.

An early association with books, or learning in any form, is the path to getting in the habit of embracing lifelong learning, which is now an essential aspect of twenty first century life. Encouraging children to read and become used to handling books should happen for any child from as soon after birth is possible. Reading aloud to them is vital in ensuring their path forward will be as good as it can be.

As soon as each of my three sons arrived home from the hospital a colourful heavy card or padded plastic book was the first object that went into their cot alongside a colourful mobile and rattle. By the time they all sat up it was the first thing they reached for.

Reading aloud, and singing a song each night before they went to sleep, became an essential aspect of their daily routine and early education from a few months onward. Reading aloud continued until they were all able to do it for themselves, and even then the youngest would still occasionally ask would I read to him to help him go to sleep.

Having a love of reading certainly helped each of them with their study and attaining good averages at school and university. Now all grown up one of them is actually in the book business, one has been in the publishing business, although he has now moved into digital media and the third is in the telecommunications business. I am sure the reading aloud helped shape their future.

Today, I am very pleased to observe they are all still voracious readers and devourers of knowledge. Recently it was revealed that reading aloud and my singing them to sleep at night is among the happiest memories of their childhood, as were trips to the The Children’s Bookshop (1971) at Beecroft in the northern districts of Sydney where we lived for eleven years.

The world is now a changing, with ebooks and ibooks being the way of the future. After this decade to enjoy the tactile quality of books will mean visiting ‘antique’ or ‘vintage’ style bookshops.

Being a bibliophile has been part of my life journey and like most people, it started in my childhood, however it was not as well planned by my own parents, even though my father was in the ‘education’ business. A Headmaster.

It was my mother who first encouraged my interest in reading because her childhood had been virtually bereft of books, except those kept at the tiny one man, one room school she attended as one of the daughters of the Head Shearer on the Belltrees Station at Scone in rural NSW.

Her education ceased at sixth grade Primary School because out of her big family she was the one ‘chosen’ to stay at home and complete domestic tasks and look after her mother. Although she got out of that one by marrying and having seven children of her own. So it was left to dear Aunty Ivy, whose fiancée was killed in World War II, to fulfill that role. She was a great reader too and encouraged me constantly.

As I was growing up my mother was always warning me of the very real dangers associated with ‘rising above one’s station in life’. This was totally at odds with her secretly encouraging me to read and expand my knowledge behind closed doors. My darling grandmother was the most encouraging.

She wanted me to not rise or walk, but to leap forward and embrace life and knowledge. She knew it was the only way to keep ‘moving forward’ as she had done when her husband died dreadfully of cancer at a young age and she gathered up her 9 children (3 fostered) and moved to Sydney so they would all survive.

Following my father’s death, when my mother was 66, she was found every day devouring every word in the Herald newspaper and Women’s Weekly monthly magazine, which were the only luxuries she could allow herself on her Australian ‘widow’s’ pension. I was in a position at the time to indulge her new found love of reading with novels I knew she would enjoy for gifts. She became an armchair traveler until finally in 1999, aged 93 she journeyed on alone.

Heartbreak and happiness is definitely part of the story of a bibliophile. Why I became one? Well that is a another story and for another day.

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2010 – 2012

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Munich in the south of Germany is the capital of Bavaria. It was voted the world's most livable city in 2010. The city father's took a great decision to rebuild it exactly as it had been prior to World War II

The intellectual ideas of every period and culture in world history are reflected in architecture and their are consequences if we tear down our living heritage, even in regard to modern buildings of great merit. Heritage is not about age. It is about buildings that have contributed to the growth and cultural development of a society, a city, a town or hamlet. The decision to be made is really all about whether they can continue to have a role to play by using clever design to incorporate old into the new. Nearly every instance where this happens the result is not only pleasing but helps in aiding people’s quality of life.

Conservation of an amazing building gives a city character. As a bonus for all time, the layers of history can be peeled back to reveal what its citizens have achieved. It can also help inspire and motivate the future we are moving toward. Consider the city fathers and citizens of Munich, who took a decision to rebuild and preserve their old city, despite it being bombed nearly out of existence during World War II. This extraordinary feat means that today. with a little wear and tear, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the old and the new. What is important is the contribution the restored city has made to its economic welfare, which noted in the billions of dollars it attracts as a financial and publishing hub in the south of Germany. The capital of Bavaria, in 2010 it was voted the world’s most livable city.

Careful efforts at reconstruction are underway and have been for twenty years or more. This involves fixing problems from previous reconstruction among other issues

The fabulous stone buildings on the Acropolis at Athens are another wonderful example. They stood for over 2,400 years, despite human folly, bloody mindedness and sheer stupidity. They are a symbolic foundation stone for today’s western culture. There is still so much to learn from, and about them, as currently those working on their conservation and reconstruction can confirm. The ruins remain as visual evidence of a society that had a great grasp on the natural environment and why space should be an integral aspect of, and important to, the production of aesthetically pleasing design. The mathematical genius of the Parthenon whose columns optically stand in a straight line, but are in fact all deliberately curved, is gob-smacking stuff. It has stood on the high ground of the Acropolis for thousands of years. It has been blown, up, rocked by earthquakes and its sculptural treasures plundered. Its aesthetic has been disfigured by people hell bent on destroying humanity. Today in ruin it manages to provide us with a platform of knowledge to learn from, which is nothing short of amazing.

In almost every field of their endeavor the ancient Greeks were pioneers and their achievements in architecture, in literature, thought and science are a part of the Greek legacy to the world at large. It was in a garden dedicated to the Greek hero Academus, hence the word Academy, that Plato taught Greek philosophy. Early Greek philosophy is nothing less than the discovery of the cosmos, i.e. the realization the world as a whole had a structure, revealing it to rational enquiry. The Greek word kosmos means order.

Among other things Plato developed was the art of self-criticism, seeing his own life as a divine mission to his fellow citizens. That required picking out the ‘soul’, and not the body, as that part of a man that required cultivation. As the body is improved by healthy exercise, so the soul benefits from morally right behaviour and ruined by the opposite, the soul was traditionally regarded as the source of life…but we digress.

The word classic means of the first class having acknowledged excellence; the word classical pertaining to the standard achieved by ancient Greek and Latin authors or their works, or the culture, art, architecture of Greek and Roman antiquity generally. The main characteristics are clarity of outline, restrained, harmonious and in accordance with established forms.

Gothic style stables belonging to the Governor now the Conservatorium of Music at NSW

In the late 60’s and throughout the 70′s, the scene that unfolded in most major cities in Australia was also happening in many other parts of the world. At Sydney aesthetically pleasing well-designed solidly built buildings, either domestic or commercial, were biting the dust. I must admit while being a witness to this chain of events I could not foresee a time in the future when we would have any regard, or appreciation, for our built heritage.

It is a miracle really that the ‘Gothic style’ stables, built to be part of the first Government House at Sydney survived to be incorporated into and provide such a wonderful point of contrast for a backdrop of amazing architectural modernity that is the Conservatorium of Music. Learning about music and the harmony of life in such surroundings for students must be a powerful experience and motivator.

When working in the 60′s as a personal assistant (interior design student) to an architect in a building firm heavily involved in small commercial work and the modern renovation of many fabulous large bungalows in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, Whelan the Wrecker and his swinging ball was destroying much of Sydney’s early heritage. The interesting aspect of the story is that he got so sick of the destruction himself he had the union impose bans to stop it. Today he holds an important position protecting what remains of Sydney’s heritage.

Goodness, how many fabulous stone and brick buildings did we witness being wiped out in the name of ‘progress’? I was constantly in hot water with the architect for asking why we could not have better solutions to re-arranging a living space without destroying the aesthetic and the architectural integrity of the original house’s design. There was so many quality fittings and superb timbers originally used. And these were being removed. He would tell me I was not to ‘rock the boat’, and ‘I was really too young to know what I was on about’. What we were getting was going to be much ‘better’ and that the clients were going to be ‘better off’.

But are we better off today than we were? And, will we be better off 20 years from now? I am not against change. Personally I embrace it constantly and its part of a progressive society. I also enjoy advancements in the arts, sciences and technology, however I am against change for change’s sake.

Change needs rhyme, reason and intelligent unemotional and unselfish debate.

Federation style Flats, Carr Street, Coogee Beach, Sydney

At the time my architect boss didn’t realize I had lived most of my life in a wonderful old block of what we now describe as Federation style flats near the sea. I just love old blocks of Flats (as opposed to apartments) because they have large rooms with high ceilings, superb architectural detailing, sometimes a walk in pantry or butler’s pantry, milk boxes, letter boxes, a back door and spaces that conformed to the tenets of the golden ratio of measurement. This meant human beings really felt good when they were at home.

One 30′s deco flat I lived in also had its original maid’s quarters. In direct contrast to the Victorian way of accommodating maids in an attic, it was indeed luxurious with a bedroom, sitting room, with built in bookcases, cupboards and easy access to the kitchen.

The block I lived in as a child was vandalised on an ongoing basis by an owner hell bent on dragging the tenants into a ‘promising future’. This meant replacing beautifully rendered in excellent condition timber window frames with mean thin aluminium ones. They were hard to maintain, especially near the sea (you can paint and stain timber) and this was pre-powder coated, which still has to be maintained if its going to continue to look good.

Ceilings were lowered by false ceilings by an ugly board studded with holes. As a child I used to think these were hideous. Today we can perhaps say at least they protected the original ceilings so they could later be restored. Then lovely details like picture rails were also stripped off in the name of fashion. They were usually part of a scheme that divided the room into aesthetic proportions, so that when removed they put the design out of kilter.

Deep open arched verandahs were glassed and boxed in with a combination of dreaded aluminium windows and cheap ply board. This ongoing awful act of ‘modernisation’ (vandalism) sealed my fate. I actively went in search of knowledge about the history of the evolution of design, especially as it related to architecture. I wanted to gain an insight into, and better understanding of, the intellectual ideas that gave great buildings around the world, birth. The objective was of being a fully informed interior designer. It turned out to be so much more of a journey, one I have riding along on ever since.

I still haven’t quite got over the council at Sydney allowing the destruction of one of its most respected architect Harry Seidler’s groundbreaking buildings at the bottom of Macquarie Street during the early 90’s. At the time, after practicing my trade for nearly 20 years, together with like-minded colleagues, I started a lecture series about the evolution of western art and design.

The objective was to use our collective knowledge to raise people’s awareness of the visual arts and also offer an appreciation for our living heritage and cultural inheritance. The first lectures were held in one of the rooms in the concrete modern annexe at the State Library of NSW, Australia.

During the break we would stand out on the roof terrace overlooking Macquarie Street and discuss how we all felt a great pit of despair inside as we viewed the sad and sorry state of the Macquarie street-scape.Ghastly late 60’s and 70’s brick buildings had replaced many of the beautiful nineteenth century Sydney sandstone classically styled town houses and commercial buildings that had made this one of the most classy and elegant streets in the country.

Between the wars these quite wonderful buildings had been interspersed with some other very good buildings, such as the first Sydney New York Gothic style skyscraper (BMA House).  It did add up to a very charming mix.

When they were torn down they were replaced by quite simply dreadful box style buildings, whose interiors and exteriors were proportionally disparate. Bland beyond belief they had ubiquitous low ceilings, that made people feel claustrophobic with often awful consequences. Many had crumbling mortar and were dotted with mean rust-ridden air condioning boxes that stuck out of previously fashionably framed timber windows – replaced by those mean metal windows. They dripped stale water onto all those walking along the street below, while slowly staining the walls on the way down. ‘Yuk’ was the only word that came to mind as we stood there looking at them. Here was visual evidence of the ‘good life’ we were all aspiring to and the riches money could buy and, as we were constantly reminded, all in the name of ‘progress’.

But did that mean it was going to be better? An article by Richard Reeves in a 2005 Journal of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufacture and Commerce in England entitled ‘The Sun sets on the Enlightenment’ poses many interesting questions. One point he makes is that ‘only by having a clear view of where it is we want to go can we stand any chance of determining our path. We need to rejuvenate the spirit, reinvent the sense of progress or be condemned to managerial politics bleached of idealism and vision, corporate short sightedness and disillusionment’.

Powerful stuff.

© Carolyn McDowall The Culture Concept Circle 2009 – 2011

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Bill Gates in TED mode

There was not a gold male statue in sight as TED 2011 took place at Long Beach, California. During the course of the week delegates talked, played and listened to music, enjoying comedy and dance and much much more. They were emailing, blogging, tweeting, eating and networking, while they held caffeine-fueled conversation breaks to talk about ideas worth spreading. Forget the red carpet – follow the red letters and get involved.

The TED Conference is for achievers wanting to change the world, find a cure for cancer, invent solutions for global hunger or design how to clean up oil spills using only the resources at hand. They want to be pro-active in community. TED conferences are the place where all the next new big ideas will be unveiled. And where once a year people hungry to come up with the next new big idea, will converge.

It’s where Apple Mac first dazzled everyone, where the first CD was played and where a computer screen was first able to be touched. It has also become so exclusive if you want to participate you need at least $6000  to attend, let alone all your other expenses.

Chris Anderson, founder of TED

So you will have to justify the expense if you want to become a TED groupie. And once you are there, along with all the greatest minds of the century, you will have to shape up and provide evidence of your own “creativity, innovation, insight or brilliance” or otherwise, ship out and join the rest of us accessing the conference FREE.

The social profit organization known as TED was founded in 1984. Initially it was conceived as a conference with the aim of bringing together people with ideas worth spreading. The disciplines it embraced were technology, entertainment and design (TED). The founders wanted to provide a platform for the world’s top thinkers, long-term visionaries and, its most awesome teachers.

The  2011 TED conferences included the award-winning TEDTalks video site, Open Translation Project and Open TV Project, the inspiring TEDFellows and annual TEDPrize, which takes a great idea each year and seeks to achieve goals of global impact.

The TEDPrize leverages the TED community’s exceptional array of talent and resources. It is awarded annually to an exceptional individual who receives $100,000 and, much more important, the granting of “One Wish to Change the World.” After several months of preparation, the wish is unveiled at an award ceremony held during the TED Conference. Over the life of the prize, wishes have led to collaborative initiatives with far-reaching impact.

The main thing they all have in common is they want to help imagine the future. All this is very noble and to be encouraged. But in order to embolden others to participate and provide real outcomes they need to connect with the community outside the conference. And, so on TED.com they now make talks and performances available FREE for everyone else.

Since it began as usual with social profit groups the scope for TED has become ever broader. It now hosts a conference in Long Beach, another in Palm Springs each spring, and also the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer. TEDIndia was held in November 2009 at Mysore, India and TEDWomen was held in Washington, DC in December 2010. It asked: How women and girls are reshaping the future?

TEDTalks began as a simple attempt to share what happens with the world. Under the moniker “ideas worth spreading,” talks were released online. They rapidly attracted a global audience in the millions. Indeed, the reaction was so enthusiastic the entire website had to be re-engineered with the goal of giving everyone on-demand access to the world’s most inspiring voices.

One of those was 2001 US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who has continued her distinguished career in foreign affairs as a businesswoman, political adviser and professor. Watch her and read on…

Jamie Oliver and his TEDwish

More than 700 TEDTalks are now available, with more added each week. All talks are subtitled in English, and various languages.

Videos can be freely shared and reposted to your own site.

Jamie Oliver was recently awarded the TEDPrize, for his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va. He makes a very inspiring speech, uncomfortable to watch, although completely compelling. 21 minutes of Jamie talking will change someone’s life. It may be yours.

Embrace TED and do excellent things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go_QOzc79Uc

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2011

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Australia's first Government House

Australia is by world standards, a young western democracy colonized by the English at the edge of Asia in the days of so-called eighteenth century European enlightenment. At the time the English parliament were seeking a place to send an ever expanding, embarrassing community of petty thieves and criminals, which included many children endeavouring to survive the injustices of the industrial age.

Our indigenous Fauna is unique, Koala's are both cute and cool

The evolution of Australia is told in the stories of its indigenous people, who inhabited the land from a time of dreaming when the heady scent of wattle and eucalyptus filled the cool night air. It is told against the backdrop of a wide brown land, whose raging rivers in full flood revitalize the earth. It is told by the sunlight bouncing off the iron roofs of buildings, such as the first house built for the first English governor, Captain Arthur Phillip. He laid the foundation stone within four months of sailing into Port Jackson on January 26 1788 with the first fleet. It had six rooms and overlooked a safe harbour anchorage, a freshwater stream and makeshift huts and tents. You might be inclined to think it was not really very sophisticated, but against a background of a natural environment its indigenous inhabitants had never disturbed, at the time, it was an assertion of culture in the colonies.

Joseph Banks by Sir Joshua Reynolds 1773

For better or worse in Australia awe inherited the imposition of European cultures on this land of great, and often violent contrast. Producing an adequate food supply in unfamiliar soil and a harsh climate was the major preoccupation for many and it was hardship that initially provoked ingenuity and creativity, not culture or fashion. Botanist Joseph Banks advised Governor Phillip concerning the introduction of economic plants to the colony of New South Wales. Plant and seeds were placed in land set aside for ‘farm and garden’ and the Governor reported to London about ‘a farm of nine acres in corn’, known from 1792 as the Governor’s Farm. These seminal beds were essential for the colony’s first survival but eventually were moved to the Hawkesbury River and other areas opening up through exploration.

In 1810 Government House Sydney was put into a complete state of repair to welcome Governor Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie and his wife Elizabeth. As soon as Macquarie arrived he set in motion an ambitious program, including public works, improving roads, encouraging exploration and the creation of the colony’s first bank. In his own way, and that of his time, Macquarie endeavoured to empathize and work with the indigenous population. As many of his contemporaries he would have believed his ideas of civilization were correct.

Macquarie organized a school for Aboriginal children, a farm for their parents to work at George’s Head, a village at Elizabeth Bay for the tribe that formerly lived on the lands the new town of Sydney occupied, and arranged that a sort of durbar would be held annually at Parramatta, to keep everyone happy. He established a string of townships around Sydney and within two decades of settlement they contained a fine array of buildings, a number of which still stand today.

No one was keener on, or more capable of improvements in buildings or their gardens within, or without the government domain than the Governor and his wife Elizabeth. They saw themselves as arbiters of taste, although their supporters, predominantly solid merchants and emancipists had no such aspirations. They wanted solid houses and warehouses to affirm their status.

The Governor and his wife valued the scenic qualities of the Domain area, whose land overlooked Port Jackson, and it was declared a Botanical garden in 1816.

Sited on the first piece of land in Australia brought under cultivation it is today one of the most gloriously sited botanical gardens in the world.

The intelligent and compassionate Elizabeth was a gently born Scotswoman who bravely accompanied her husband on many adventures while she was here. She took a keen interest in the welfare of women convicts and of the indigenous peoples, as well as gardening and agriculture.

They were shared with pioneer’s wife Elizabeth McArthur and together they are attributed with pioneering hay-making in the colony. She brought from England a collection of books on architecture, which proved useful to her husband and his chosen convict architect Francis Greenway. She was also instrumental in planning a road that encircled the Government Domain to the point which, like the road, was named after her.

Not many colonists had an appreciation for the Gothick style, which was enjoying a revival in the England they had left. Its pointed arches and gargoyles had become involved in a romantic ‘cult of the picturesque’. Fortunately Francis Greenway, appointed by Macquarie to assist public work initiatives, could accommodate the Macquarie’s architectural style preferences. His buildings were informed by an extensive knowledge of the ancient buildings of England.

To the left and right entering Sydney Cove were built the very picturesque Fort Macquarie (on the site where the opera house is now) and the Dawes Point Battery, which had dubious defence capabilities. Both were part of a setting for a new Government House, one imperial in scale, but Gothick in style. The first building completed, the Governor’s stables (now the Conservatorium of Music) enjoyed views to the west over the town, and over the harbor to the lighthouse on the eastern horizon. They certainly would not have shamed a substantial estate back home.

Elizabeth Macquarie designed Parramatta church’s towers. Her participation in architectural affairs was a natural extension of the female artistic role which was finally, and patronizingly defined in 1831 by the Foreign Quarterly Review. It suggested women study architecture ‘not in order that they may be able to draw columns, for that is merely the means, not the end of the pursuit, but that they may thereby cultivate their tastes, and ground it on something less baseless and sifting than mere feminine liking and disliking’. Scottish botanist, designer and editor John Claudius Loudon, whose Encyclopedia of Cottage, Farm, Villa Architecture sold well in Sydney and Hobart in Tasmania, agreed. ‘If the study of landscape drawing by ladies, has led to the improvement of landscape gardening, why should not the study of architectural drawing, on their part, lead to the improvement of domestic architecture’. Why not indeed! This might all seem a bit silly and perhaps trifling issues to us today, but at the time it was an extraordinary manifesto of a maturing culture in the colonies.

In the years between the arrival and departure of the Macquarie’s in 1821 New South Wales changed a great deal, especially in its architectural tastes and the attitudes, fashions and passions of its people, who now included many free settlers moving forward to a new life in a new land.

In format all early colonial bungalows were single storied with a wide shade inducing verandah (Elizabeth Farm).

Loudon in his 1833 edition of The Encyclopedia expressed the importance of association for the people of the colonies. The various elements of Gothic design were meant to arouse an emotional, rather than intellectual response in the viewer – to conjure up moods and associations rather than replicate medieval objects precisely.

It may appear quite odd to a resident in Britain, that a British emigrant to Van Diemen’s Land should wish to build his dwelling in the form of an English church tower but it was all about feeling insecure in a brand new land, feelings that can hardly be conceived by those who have never experienced them. And so it was that Gothic houses would be seen among those sent to establish the penal colony as ideal. They were enduring the hardships of being so far from home while, at the same time, attempting to establish their own identity and it’s easy to understand how and why such a fashion would take hold.

But the Gothic was not the solution for former naval Captain Piper, who was appointed a magistrate by Governor Macquarie. He built his villa in a style that eclipsed the Governor’s house. And, for four brief years before her husband’s fortunes declined, the house’s namesake, Henrietta, entertained all of Sydney’s polite society there.

The 1830’s in New South Wales are often referred to as ‘the golden decade’. This is when the aspirations of pastoral landholders and merchants resulted in public buildings and mansions being rendered in the ‘classical’ style.  Alexander MacLeay, Colonial Secretary under Governors Darling and Bourke embraced horticulture and botany.

Secretary of the Linnean Society (1798-1825) in England a variety of Bocconia was named Macleaya cordata in his honour. He built his country house Brownlow Hill on 1500 acres of land near Camden, which he obtained by grant in 1827.

Elegant Italian urns formalized a generous drive overhung with Chinese elms (Ulmus parvifolia) contributing significantly to the romantic atmosphere, which still pervades this historic garden. His son George inherited it in 1848 but he sold it off in 1875 to the family who have lived there ever since.

McLeay’s city house at Elizabeth Bay was renowned for its rare plants. Its steeply sloping site combined elements of the landscape and picturesque movements advocated by English nineteenth century garden guru Humphrey Repton. ‘From the first commencement Mr. Macleay never suffered a tree of any kind to be destroyed, until he saw the necessity of doing so. He gained the advantage of embellishment from his native trees and harmonized them with the foreign trees now growing. His botanic, flower, landscape, fruit and kitchen gardens are all on the first scale…and he has also planned a vineyard of considerable extent upon terraces, which has answered every expectation’. Today only a small overgrown fragment of the garden survives but detailed descriptions of it keep its place in the evolution of gardens in Australia’.

John Claudius Loudon’s four significant books on horticulture, gardening and domestic architecture were available in New South Wales and Tasmania heralding the arrival of the Victorian Age. The cult of the picturesque had encouraged every point of the garden to have some ornament or architectural feature. The new gardenesque style, promoted by Loudon, featured individual plants in an endeavor to showcase botanical differences.

According to the ‘gardenesque school’ Loudon said ‘all the trees and shrubs planted are arranged in regard to their kinds and dimensions and they are planted at first at, or as they grow thinned out to, such distances apart as may best display the natural form and habit of each’.

A riot of color went hand in hand with carpet bedding and a pursuit of botanical triumphs. By the 1840’s New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land saw years of economic depression and drought as the first Australian pastoral boom passed. It was the discovery of gold and resultant flood of fortune seekers that sent the colonial economy into boom again.

As in England, in Australia a grand country estate represented the pinnacle of material and social achievement. Homestead portraits were commissioned by the owner of the property to adorn his parlour. Greek houses gave way to Italianate style villas. Tiled colonnades, columned pergolas and balustrade terraces linked house to garden.

Grander examples were mansions with palace facades, surmounted by loggia topped towers that overlooked terraces and flights of steps complete with cast cement balustrading, urns and statuary. It was not uncommon to find Venus, Napoleon, or Captain Cook lurking about in the bushes.

These were the boom years of the Industrial Revolution and grand houses like Melbourne’s Rippon Lea, epitomize the extravagance of the era. Its architecture of polychrome brickwork was set off by magnificent wide lawns that swept down to a two-acre lake where a fine bridge, made of iron, has been cast to give an appearance of timber. Much of the charm of Rippon Lea lies in the sensitivity, which has been shown for the garden’s historic origins.

The Botanical gardens in Brisbane, on the river, and the gardens of the Brisbane Acclimatization Society, were established by the 1880’s. They were widely known for their enlightened research and generous policy of distribution. Many plants were recognized as being suitable for subtropical gardening in Brisbane. One of the most spectacular would have to be the Bougainvillea, which could be trained over any style of framework built as a support.

In April 1884 Oxford educated lawyer and ornithologist John Cotton and his wife and nine children constructed a larger house of sawn timber in the Australian countryside. He, like many others, benefited from the changes and the culture in the colonies the Macquarie’s had established. ‘We have now been resident in our new house five weeks and find in it every comfort that we would enjoy in the same style of house in England, and perhaps more, there being no rent or taxes to pay. We have a comfortable sitting room 18ft x 16ft with a brick chimney where there is a cheerful fire of logs constantly kept up unless the mildness of the weather should prevent our replenishing it. We have the piano here, which sounds remarkably well, in our wooden house, and the walls are ornamented with a few pictures. My books are arranged on shelves in recesses each side of the fireplace and they will continue to afford a source of amusement and study’. Within one hundred years of settlement life in the colony became very civilized and culture in the colonies, a reality.

In Australia, our aesthetic choices, like or dislikes were formed through associational interpretation and imagery. Living in the bush for many today still remains a romantic ideal, much like country life in great country houses in England, or villas in Rome, while most people cling to a quarter acre suburban block. Half city, half bush, house and garden style today reflects individuality. This is made feasible by the modern car and American roadway system. It is formed through an interplay of international influences and our own complex multi-culturalism.

Australia today enjoys a robust cultural life, applying its creativity to generate innovative solutions in the fields of medical research, science, design, the arts, resource management and sustainable urban living for all its peoples. It is a multicultural land of opportunity, one whose layers of diversity embolden everyone. Its pioneering spirit is ever present and an ever increasing mix of culturally different people is constantly adding to its layers of diversity.

In Australia today our art, design, music and style are constantly being re-interpreted, distilled and decanted into something quite unique.

Carolyn McDowall 2010, 2011

Photograph Brisbane 150 courtesy ABC Printing and BCC Council, Brisbane Australia.

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This beaker and its saucer were part of a tea and chocolate service given to Vittorio Amadeo II, King of Sardinia (1666-1732) by Augustus the Strong, the Elector of Saxony, under whose patronage the Meissen factory was established. c1725 Johann Gregor Höroldt (1696-1775 ) the beaker is now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York

As a commodity porcelain aided the growth of both the east and western world’s economies and benefited their social and cultural development for centuries. Porcelain is a translucent ‘hard paste’ ceramic ware first brought across the old silk road to the courts of Europe, from far-eastern Cathay (China) during the Ming Dynasty ( 1368-1644). The best came from the kilns at Jingdezhen. The secret of how to produce porcelain, as it was named by fourteenth century Venetian traveler to the ancient capital of Cathay Marco Polo, remained a mystery in the west for centuries. An ability to see through something so hard and impervious to liquid seemed magical to the princes of the courts of Europe and England. It represented a refinement of taste and was given silver and gilded mounts to protect its fragility and honour its brilliance and then put on display as a symbol of status, princely power and prestige. This wonder ware was painted brilliantly in cobalt (blue) at first, and then in an ever expanding variety of colours.

By the seventeenth century the English, and various other European trading companies, had increased their trade with China and Japan, who was also producing a rival product for Chinese porcelain. Their ships plied risky new routes, which saw many a cargo end up at the bottom of the sea. Back home in Europe and England local tin glazed earthenware provided the only alternative to the imported magical translucent ware from China, because the many who had tried to manufacture a hard paste style of ceramic had failed.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century however, the rituals associated with tea and coffee drinking were in the ascendancy in Europe, England and America, so the commercial advantages of producing a competitive product, to that of the long standing Eastern trade with China (Cathay), was highly motivating. It was Augustus the Strong (1670 – 1733) Elector of Saxony, a south-eastern state of modern day Germany, who took the risks, funded the experimentation and subsequently reaped the rewards.

During the first decade of the eighteenth century groundbreaking hard paste porcelain wares, produced at the town of Meissen under the patronage of Augustus the Strong would inspire and motivate others by their success. It was as early as 1694 that the German mathematician, physicist, physician and philosopher Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnahaus had discussed the possibilities of local porcelain manufacture with Augustus. He had a clear understanding of what constituted hard paste porcelain and desperately wanted to be the first European to discover the secret of China’s seemingly magically translucent wares, which had fascinated consumers at the European and English courts for centuries.

From 1700 Augustus the Strong was also involved with the fate of a young alchemist of dubious reputation Johan Friedrich Böttger, who was in trouble in Prussia for failing to transmute base metals into gold. Augustus was a powerful prince whose passion for porcelain was all consuming. So he provided Tschirnahaus with a laboratory for experimentation and brought he and Bottger together. Although he resisted at first, Bottger inevitably became involved with Tschirnahaus’s porcelain experiments.

Carrying out trials to test the heat resistance and chemical changes of Saxony’s earths and minerals at high temperatures by 1703 the duo had achieved a hard paste style stoneware, and produced a small range of products in imitation of imported Chinese red wares.

In 1708 Tschirhause died of dysentery, just a year before a report to the King on the 28th March, 1709 which claimed Böttger ‘could make good white, porcelain with finest glazing and painting in such perfection as to er at least equal, if not surpass, the Eastern production’. This was a boast because it took several more years for the porcelain to eventually rival oriental wares. By then the laboratory was too small for growth so in 1710 they moved it into an old fortress at Meissen in Saxony.

At the Leipzig Easter Fair of 1710, the Meissen Factory exhibited their wares for first time. Black glazed red stone wares (right) promoted Saxony’s industries and their  luxury goods. They were described in the Leipzig Gazette as ‘lacquered like the most beautiful Japanese products.’ The painting on these wares is traditionally attributed to Martin Schnell, who was known to have worked for Meissen between 1711 and 1715.

The manufacture of the new European porcelain differed from the Chinese by its relatively high proportion of the mineral kaolin. About 50% against the Chinese of 30%. They were experimenting and it would be wrong to imagine at all that they were very scientific about what they doing. All they really knew was that in order to reproduce porcelain they had to fire the wares at a very high temperature.

This bowl of hard-paste porcelain (left) has two delightful loop handles that extend from its interior. They are formed as twisted rose stems and extend out over the surface in modeled and applied foliage and flowers. The body itself is a creamy paste with a slightly greenish glaze. It was all about trial and error and the construction of the kilns . These remained a carefully kept secret, almost as precious as that of the composition of the paste. European pieces were fired twice, against a single Chinese firing process. After the first firing they were painted and the colours embedded by the high temperatures of the second firing.

The immediate public response was disappointing, because many of Böttger’s original stonewares were left plain, or had minimal gilded decoration, which we would today think was wonderfully minimalist. However at the time they were competing against a highly coloured and sophisticated product from the established market of China, and the burgeoning market of Japan, so this would have been viewed in a different light. Enamelers, outside the factory, often acquired slightly imperfect, or outdated white pieces quite cheaply. They would then embellish them with fashionable designs to sell at a profit. To assist the factory Augustus the Strong asked court Goldsmith Johann Jakob Irminger to provide both designs and ideas for new shapes.

This large jug of Böttger porcelain (right) made c1715 has ‘Irminger overlay’, a technique he developed for applying delicate reliefs, in this case beautiful blossoming branches. This style of porcelain was meant to be fashionable and valuable.

At Meissen they copied the palette of colours of iron/red, bluish/green, yellow and light blue used by Japanese potter Kakiemon Sakaida with sometimes the surface enriched with additional gilding. In this case the additional painted decoration is beautifully restrained and it is easy to see why Meissen would go on to great things.

With improvements Boettger’s red stonewares (left) also became extremely fashionable at court. Much use was made of Chinese models at first, but within a very short time an indigenous style emerged with its own shapes, symbols and styles.

New techniques for polishing and engraving were developed and eventually, with artistic innovation, the appropriate response came from the public. The Meissen Porcelain factory was well on its way to success.

Around 1716 Böttger produced beautiful porcelain wares with pink-lustre inner surfaces. The lustre was achieved by a dangerous technique whose recipe included mercury, which gave a metallic glow to the glaze.

The mixture for making lustre also contained pure gold and enamels and was therefore extremely expensive. Only a few experimental pieces survive where lustre is applied as lavishly as with this tea bowl and saucer.

This tea bowl has a matching saucer and is a now rare example of the earliest type of porcelain developed by Böttger who wrote to the King in 1717 saying

‘these works are, so to speak, my first-born children and I trust you will therefore not take it amiss, when I say that, for myself, I love them tenderly and… I try to bring them into the high esteem and opinion of others‘.

Böttger and his key workers were sworn to secrecy about the many different factory processes they refined, as well as those in development. They were well treated and given reasonable salaries, but security was tight and they were virtually prisoners.

Böttger, we are told, eventually took to drink and bad companions and died in 1719 at the early age of 37.

The coffee pot (left) with its hinged cover is painted in enamels and gilt, with the addition of a silver-gilt mount; It was made around 1720, but the decoration was added in Augsburg, attributed by scholars to the workshop of Johann Auffenwerth, ca. 1725-30.

The colours green and mauve are similar to those of a palette preferred at the court of the Chinese Emperors named for the longest reigning Emperor Kangxi of the Qing dynasty who ruled on the throne of heaven from 1661 – 1722.

Böttger’s contribution to the glory and fame his princely patron Augustus the Strong enjoyed would live on in the traditions he established at Meissen. At the time of his youthful demise the factory was in the ascendancy in Europe. Appointed manager in 1720 Samuel Stolzel earned respect when he improved the kilns for the factory. He brought to Meissen the man who would take its reputation world wide.

Gregorious Horoldt, who became Court Painter in charge of decorating the wares. Horoldt’s work was so much in demand by 1725 he had ten journeymen and five boys working for him. By 1731 that had increased to twenty five journeymen, eleven boys and two colour grinders

Johann Gottlob Kirchner was put in charge of the modeling. He taught drawing and modeling to the apprentices and recorded all the new and existing patterns in use at the factory at that time. The king’s greed for porcelain never diminished and with these two workers he had the ability to decorate with porcelain the newly bought Hollandische Palais (later renamed the Japanese Palace).

He planned to furnish all the rooms with vases, life sized sculptures of animals, the apostles and, in the chapel, even a ceramic altar, pulpit and organ. Nothing on this scale had been attempted before and new techniques had to be invented and mastered. The enormity of the task was hindered by the impatience of Augustus. Kirchner was the only man capable of undertaking such a daunting commission and he employed Johan Joachim Kandler to help extradite matters.

Joachim Kandler (1706 – 1775) was trained as a sculptor in Dresden and was destined to become the greatest German porcelain modeller, responsible for much of the success of the Meissen porcelain factory during the 18th century. A bust of Gottfried Schmiedel (right) modelled by Johann Joachim Kandler c1739  delights through its virtuosity. It is a work of great skill and invention.Kandler found nothing too difficult to attempt and his efforts were extremely productive.

His works were naturalistic in style and imitated throughout Europe. He joined the factory in 1731 and produced seven large birds about four feet high and one of the apostles for the Japanese palace and was designing its table ware when the King died, his successor vowing to complete the task.

During his forty four years at Meissen the reputation of the factory reached dizzying heights. His elaborate vases were nothing short of sensational. The best known of all Kandler’s works are his figurines of  characters from the Italian Commedia dell’Arte which are among the best works of this kind. They include Harlequin, Columbine and Pierrot, All his figures were engaging and delightful. The production was enormous – more than a thousand different subjects in all including people, animals,  mythological and allegorical pieces.

It was around 1728 that Kandler produced the ‘swan’ set whose embossed decoration on plates depicted swans floating on water surrounded by water plants and bullrushes.

The tureens were in the shapes of enormous shells adorned with mermaid handles and the oil and vinegar cruets, took the form of little putti riding swans. Its new style of floral decoration, inspired by the work of Japan’s wonder ceramicist Sakeida Kakiemon would in the end become a wholly new European concept.

The disastrous Seven Year’s War in Europe 1756 – 1763 heralded the death knell of Meissen glory. The factory was ransacked and pillaged by Frederick the Great. Throughout this period Kandler held the workers together. Following the peace of 1763 the new Elector Frederich Christian attempted to put his country and the factory back onto its feet. But while they were recovering other European and English factories were in the fashionable ascendancy while the struggling Meissen was in decline. Although the porcelain marked with the crossed swords, symbolic of the Elector of Saxony may have been preferred by many, it was not enough to save Meissen from closure. Kandler, whose originality, fertile imagination, skill and determination, together with an unsurpassed artistic talent had given the factory its greatest success died in 1775. Though it was later resurrected and continued it was never again to reign supreme. Today Augustus the Strong’s claim to fame rests on his patronage, his well known passion for porcelain and subsequent ownership of the first European factory to produce porcelain in the west,  rather than on the battles that he fought.

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2010, 2011

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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 was already an artist; an accomplished painter and sculptor, who 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 and was convinced the bold new industrial age dawning required an audacious style of architecture. Who better then to design it than himself. “We must start again from zero,” he proclaimed. Dressing like a bureaucrat, in dark suits, bow ties, round horn-rimmed glasses his gestures revealed that he was willing and able to lead the charge to create a brave new world. His books published in 1923, 1948 and 1955 have ever since had an international influence on town planning and building design. His systems, which contained harmony and proportion, ensured that his architectural style honoured architecture of the past. He championed the use of the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers, which were integral to his success.

His first building was based on the technique of the Modular, a system using standard size units relating to the measurements of the human figure (Vitruvius 1st Century, Palladio 16th century).

An example was the Unite d’habitation (left) built at Marseilles in France between 1945 – 5. It was conceived as one of a number of tall buildings than when the overall scheme had been completed, would form a pattern projecting from a carpet of low buildings and open spaces.

He preached his own doctrine and defined his own recipe for a new style of architecture: he raised a building on stilts, mixed in a free-flowing floor plan and then made all the walls independent of the structure. He added horizontal strip windows and topped it all off with a roof garden for relaxation and living life stylishly. However when we describe his method it makes him sound like a technician, and he was anything but. His austere, white-walled villas, completed after World War I in and around Paris, are memorable for both their cool beauty and airy sense of space inside and out.

“A house is a machine for living in,” he wrote. His new style of simple architecture spoke of the sun, wind and the sea and his villas are proof of his enduring respect for space as integral to design. They were about an art of space, which in itself in overcrowded European cities, was a luxury.

The new architecture known contemporarily as the International Style, had many partisans in Europe; Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in Germany and Theo van Doesburg in Holland, to name a few.

In Australia architect Harry Seidler, born in 1923, championed the Modernist style down under.

The Rose Seidler House, built in 1948, fulfills Le Corbusier’s ideal of being able to move through architecture seamlessly.

Le Corbusier was a tireless missionary, addressing the public in manifestos, pamphlets, exhibitions and his own magazine. He wrote quite literally dozens of books about interior decoration, painting and architecture.

Together with his brother Pierre Jeanneret and Charlotte Perriand he also designed furniture. Together they initiated the use of chromed or nickelled tubular or flat steel as a framework for their furniture; it had painted slab steel construction, plain veneers, leather or skin upholstery.

The foundation of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM) in 1929 gave the fledgling group cohesion and exhibition venues of their own. His now well known tubular, chromed steel adjustable chaise longue was exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris. His architecture spoke of sun and wind and the sea. The machines he admired most were ocean liners, which is evidenced in his design for the staircase at the Savoye Villa outside Paris. It’s streamlined style has been much copied.

Le Corbusier devoted several hours a day to painting. The catalogue, currently being drawn up by his foundation lists, 419 canvases painted from 1918 (the year when he met the painter Ozenfant with whom he created Purism) until he died in 1965.

In 1945, Joseph Savina, a cabinetmaker from Brittany, made a wooden sculpture after a painting by Le Corbusier. This experiment led to a twenty-year collaboration, during which forty-four sculptures were made in natural or polychrome wood.  Twenty-seven tapestry cartoons were made by Le Corbusier, some of them in collaboration with P. Baudouin, between 1936 and 1965. Most of the subjects are inspired by his paintings.

Following his lead in all the major cities of the world there was a stampede to modernize practically everything. No attempt was made to distinguish between functional and non-functional while streamlining became de rigeur. All objects moving or stationery, were encased in sleek, aerodynamic bodies emblematic of his era’s obsession with both speed and efficiency.

Carolyn McDowall © The Culture Concept Circle – 2010, 2011

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The Gothic is always with us. Indeed Kenneth Clark whose essay on the history of the style charted its revival in the nineteenth century, showed its ability to survive through periods not usually associated with the pointed arch and cusped ornament. At the end of the twentieth century, perhaps as a reaction against the brutalism of modernist architecture and the anonymity of our cities, there was a revived fascination with the Gothic as a style and a renewed interest in Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-52) one of its greatest theorists and a forceful proponent of Gothic decoration. Pugin’s influence was felt on a generation of Gothic revivalist architects, the most famous being Gilbert Scott, and his own plans and designs were realised in both Sydney and Tasmania.

Pugin in his book, Contrasts, published in 1836, sought to compare the ‘noble edifices’ that embellished the ideal late medieval city with the dreary structures that dominate the nineteenth century factory town. His aim was ‘showing the present decay of taste.’ Dreaming spires have given way to smokestacks, grass has been replaced by the gasometer and the principal civic structures appear to be the asylum and gaol.

Pugin’s aesthetic didacticism and his romanticised attachment to the middle ages irritated many of his contemporaries, but he brought to the design of tiles, wallpapers, furniture and ironwork principles of design and authentic construction that pointed the way forward for William Morris and others in the Arts and Crafts movement who came after.

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.’ His early training and experience had been as a furniture designer.

When, after a fire, part of Windsor castle was rebuilt during the 1820s in the Gothic style he had produced designs for rosewood and gilt furniture to fill its halls. Then, following the decision of the British parliament to rebuild the Palace of Westminster in the Gothic style, after it also had been destroyed by fire in 1834, Pugin assisted Charles Barry on the massive project for many years and designed furniture, tiles and wallpapers to embellish the building

Ambulatory in St John's Cathedral at Brisbane, Queensland Australia the last Gothic Revival style cathedral in the world to be completed. Designed by John Loughborough Pearson an admirer of Augustus Welby Pugin

Despite his professed abhorrence of the industrialized nineteenth century Pugin was commercially minded enough to realze that the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in London’s Hyde Park to showcase British arts and manufactures, offered him an incomparable opportunity to bring his work to the attention of the buying public. The ‘Crystal Palace’ of Iron and Glass was the least sympathetic of settings for a display of Gothic inspired ecclesiastical ornaments and domestic furnishings, but within this large greenhouse Pugin created an exotic Medieval Court that was to have a significant influence on public taste.

Rich fabrics and papers caught the eye while signs advertising the wares of the craftsmen who collaborated with Pugin hung amidst heraldic emblems. John Hardman of Birmingham, who made brass, iron and gold work to Pugin designs, displayed his door hinges, chandeliers and fire dogs; George Meyers set out his furniture and carved architectural details, and John Crace showed his carpets and paperhangings. For Pugin arts and crafts were complementary. He extolled the virtues of the medieval craftsmen and attempted to resurrect their original processes. Bringing an antiquarian knowledge of Gothic ornament into conjunction with his own powerful design sense, and drawing upon the skills of nineteenth century workers, he was able to produce a range of new Gothic wares- furniture, wallpapers and ceramics.

From the eighteenth century furniture in the Gothic style had been available from most prominent cabinetmakers, and many patternbooks offered a variety of designs ranging from the more historically correct to fanciful adaptations and even exotic hybrids of Gothic and Chinese design. What Pugin sought in his Gothic Furniture in the Style of the Fifteenth Century (1835) was an almost archaeological correctness. Pugin also saw his furniture as part of an overall scheme for interior design but the different needs of the nineteenth century and the lack of useful models for certain pieces saw him freely adapt and interpret ornament taken from a variety of sources, often Flamboyant French or Flemish Gothic. An octagonal table designed by Pugin for the Palace of Westminister, for example, has no medieval prototype behind it. In this case Pugin takes ogee arches from late Gothic architecture to support the board.

The polychrome decoration of the lower area of the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, recently restored by Eugène Viollet le Duc, as well as rich late medieval textiles, were major influences on Pugin and on John Crace the interior designer who executed Pugin’s lavish schemes, which he elaborated from sketches. Because hand painted wall treatments were so expensive to attempt Pugin and Crace created wallpapers for the interiors of Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire and Lismore Castle, County Waterford.

They also employed such papers in the Palace of Westminister where enormous walls had to be covered. Pugin favoured stongly patterned wallpapers in a richly ornamented style.He sought a two dimensional medieval flatness and avoided attempts at false perspectives that might be suggested by shading.

For Pugin the pattern of forms and repeated devices were enough and he sought to create his effect using striking contrasts of colour. He also took a great interest in natural forms as his 1848 publication Floriated  Ornament shows and this allowed him to create sophisticated patterns based on stylised flowers such as the lily or the cabbage rose.

Pugin Cross

For the Palace of Westminster alone Pugin designed over one hundred different wallpapers utilising Italian textile designs, traditional English motifs such as the Rose and Portcullis , as well as fleurs-de Lys and Pomegranates.

These papers were block printed in a variety of colour ways but this process was both labour intensive and expensive. However, even today, papers such as Pugins’ Gothic Lily are still being produced in small runs from the original blocks. In a manner that anticipates William Morris, Pugin still believed that the Gothic could be popularised through the commercial production of cheap papers for domestic decoration.While he himself did not live to implement these plans, several wallpaper companies in the 1860s produced Puginesque papers for a wider commercial market.

Tiles and ceramics to Pugin’s Gothic designs were produced from the 1840s by the potter Herbert Minton at Stoke-on Trent in Staffordshire. Pugin had a developed interest in medieval ceramics and was particularly intigued by the encaustic thirteenth century tiles in the floor of the Chapter House, Westminister Abbey. It was Minton who developed a means for reproducing tiles by the same encaustic process. He produced a moulded indented base tile and onto this  slip of a second colour was poured to produce a striking two-tone effect.

Pugin did much to popularise the use of brightly coloured tiles, using them to enliven both walls and floors.In the decoration of St Giles Church, Cheadle, Pugin used tiles to create jewel-box effects in small spaces. Some of the tiles placed there were hand painted or overprinted after production. Pugin-designed tiles were used in 1850 to decorate the Palace of Westminster and displayed in the Medieval Court at the Great Exhibition. Later, Minton’s employment of the new Collins and Reynolds process for printing tiles with transfers saw a mass production of Pugin inspired designs.

Tableware to Pugin designs was produced by Minton for special commissions and for general sale. A simple printed blue trefoil pattern known in the Minton catalogue as Pugin Gothic, pattern 8659, was produced from mid 1840s down to the 1920s and is much admired. It was for Minton also that Pugin designed a series of multicoloured ornamental plates with foliated Gothic designs and French or Latin mottos.

Most celebrated of all the motto plates, and the most Victorian in its sentiment, is the ‘Waste Not Want Not’ Bread Plate, which dates from 1849. Produced by an encaustic process using inlaid coloured clays, the plate features strong Gothic lettering, the words nicely balanced, stylised foliated bands of ornament and appropriately a wheel of wheat.

Pugin’s legacy of rich decoration documents for us one aspect of the Victorians’ fascination with Medievalism and it finds many admirers. In 1994 the Victoria and Albert Museum’s exhibition, Pugin: A Gothic Passion, drew enormous crowds and the V&A gift shop promptly sold out of the reproduction china and the stationery decorated with Pugin’s designs. It appears that another generation has discovered Pugin’s sumptuous decorative patterns as well as his theoretical writings that find a new resonance in our post-modernist times.

Author: © Dr. Brian Brennan, MA (Hons) Phd (Macq) Dip Ed (UTS) 2009 – 2011

* Quote Kenneth Clarke, The Gothic Revival

Bibliography
M. Aldrich, Gothic Revival ,  Phaidon, London, 1994.
M.Archer, ‘Gothic Wallpapers-An Aspect of the Gothic Revival,’ Apollo 78 (1963), pp.109-16.
P. Atterbury and C. Wainwright, Pugin. A Gothic Passion, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1994.
K.Clark, The Gothic Revival, reprint, John Murray, London, 1962.
J.Jones, Minton: The First Two Hundred Years of Design and Production, Swan Hill Press, London, 1993.
C.Wainwright, ‘Furnishing the New Palace: Pugin’s Furniture and Fittings,’ Apollo 135 (1992), pp.3-3-7.

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1. CIVILISED: At the Beginnings of Art
2. EVOLUTION OF ART, DESIGN & STYLE
   Course Outline
3. WHAT IS: Art Deco

World War 1 was a great divide in the new age of modernity. By the 1920’s vast social and community changes crystallized into an era of care-free release, which was initiated by the end of the first global warfare. Women, in some cases rebelliously, cut off waist fabulous waist length hair and sported a fashionable bob, traumatizing Victorian generation parents for whom symbolically the loss of such beauty went hand in hand with a loss of virginity, and possibly the soul.

From the pyramids of Egypt to the beat beat beat of the African tom tom a new fashionable modern style emerged across all the arts. This included architecture, interiors, fashionable couture and fabulous works of art. This is the period when function over form began its rise to be at the forefront of contemporary design.

Russian-born French painter and designer (1892-1990) Erte however, expounded romanticism. His witty lyrical flowing visions of the human figure achieved a striking effect His aesthetic message linked blazing colour with a tantalizing taste for the exotic, erotically tinged… begging an answer to the question. Who is in the cage? The confirmation of ‘design as art’ appeared in the aftermath of an International Exhibition of Arts held at Paris from April to October in 1925. Its protagonists, according to Modernist author Alastair Duncan, were escaping the’ tyranny of historical styles and a calcified culture’.

Did they succeed? Were their styles original as claimed? And, are they still informing the evolution of art, design and style? In the 1930′s, lured by the romantic classicism of Paris, many people arrived on luxury liners and locomotives. These had been reduced, by graphic artists, to fabulous fashion statements of line, form and colour. They were seductive images all about speed and power. Paris, the home of those who lived life as art, became a meeting ground for both the ‘ancients’ and the ‘moderns’. The future was now.

Many people, who have not enjoyed an arts education are often astounded when they discover that the modernist movement borrowed from the past in order to fashion the future. It was how its designers enthusiastically interpreted its individual elements that was the change, as they effectively made art design and style appear new.

While everything may have appeared new a style that has been, or is indeed now is, successful in its aesthetic has usually conformed and complied with the ‘rules of taste’ of its time, which is in its turn is governed by fashion.

British author John Edward Horatio Steegman (1899-1966) brought out his publication ‘The Rule of Taste’ in 1936, when he was employed at the National Portrait Gallery (London).  He was examining the Georgian era in England. [1714-1830] and had great difficulty in defining what constituted “taste”, claiming it ‘expresses both an immutable quality of discernment, criticism and perception’, and… ‘an active sensitivity to temporary fashions’.

James Laver, who wrote the forward for its 1966 re-publication, posed the question ‘How can “Taste”, which is sensitive to temporary fashions be described as immutable? [not changing or be able to be changed]. And, are taste and fashion mutually incompatible?

Internationally, and con-temporarily a mixture of art, science and technology is informing fashionable design, art and architecture, especially the construction of buildings both domestic and commercial, from Dubai to downtown L.A, from London to Melbourne.

For many just their clever creative conception is hard to comprehend, like a Dynamic Tower planned for Dubai, which will be perpetually in motion. It will also be the first skyscraper designed to be self powered, having a care for the environment.

Materializing out of the societal revolution of the sixties, where flower power was all pervasive, the environment and its conservation is now of global concern.

Recycling clothing and all those other objects we value and enjoy in life as much as we can is the new way of moving forward.  To ensure that it happens we just have to make them fashionable and especially palatable to potentates, princes, politicians, priests, patrons, poseurs, partners and plebians.

Maximalism, as the name itself suggests, presents all sorts of design possibilities and will perhaps help us meet the challenge. Works of art and design, admired for centuries, reflects the evolution of humankind spiritually, socially and culturally. They will continue to work effectively and be recycled just as long as their proportions please the eye, their subject challenges the mind, engages the spirit and connects with the soul.

Today in many chic wine bars and restaurants around the world antique crystal chandeliers illuminate the contemporary scene. Stunning recycled textiles, such as the extraordinary Kaitags (Hali) from Dhagestan, which are masterpieces of craft as well as powerful statements of culture, are appearing instead of traditional paintings on all  the very best walls.

Smart eye-catching antique oriental carpets are a manifestation of a weaving tradition that dates back to the ancient empire we know now as Persian. They work brilliantly over tables, on walls, or on timber floors,  such as the wide plank boards seventeenth century European society admired.

The world of costume has been busy re-fashioning its folds and foibles to suit simple style statements, reducing the amount of fabric used as in the fifties following World War II, although that has not always translated to a reduction in price for the consumer.

Costume encompasses all that we wear. Jewellery fashioned from recycled gems, seeds from nature or other fashion items are now becoming many a bosom, while hats have gone from being extravagant pieces of fabulous fluff to being just plain fancies.

Shoes have also been transformed, from extreme platform stilettos to elegant ballet flats, which as Karl Stevanovic on the Australian Today Show pointed out ” takes a confident woman to wear”.

Costume includes the previously unmentionable undergarments and they have been on show on a scale far beyond those who founded the world of fashionable couture could have ever possibly imagined.

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 ‘fashion’ collectively reflects a western society in which privacy has been stripped completely bare.

An original modernist the Swiss born French architect Le Corbusier (1834-1898) ensured that space became a recognized aspect of design. Those who inhabited his buildings experienced its reviving spirit.

I am not so sure however that he wanted space to become a fashion statement of luxury, power and status. This means it needs to be well managed in the future so it can benefit the greater good in an already overcrowded world.

Fashion needs to now drive the social consciousness of our creators, connoisseurs and collectors world wide. It needs to challenge the responsibilities we carry as individuals and as members of a global society.

Fashion wants us to understand and discover what we owe; to ourselves and to others. And, as it changes in this century and for this generation, fashion must become an attitude, a way of life that we choose.

Yes, today, fashion is definitely more than a frock.

Carolyn McDowall, The Culture Concept Circle 2010, 2011

Related posts:

1. A ‘Compleat’ Gentleman, more than a leader of style
2. WHAT IS: Art Deco
3. The Culture Concept Circle – You Tube Channel

Sir Christopher and Lady Sykes by George Romney

The eighteenth century in England began on horseback and ended in the advent of the railway carriage. The population of nearly 6 million people lived on land under cultivation that was still tilled as in medieval times. In the north impassable mountains, scarcity of population and poverty of the soil meant that the land was pretty barren. Roads were truly appalling and a man might spend his whole life and never go further than the village market. This state of affairs would certainly not suit a man of vision or one seeking to harness the power of the imagination to envision and escape the realities and harshness of everyday life. One who wanted to see himself as a ‘compleat‘ gentleman.

By the second half of the eighteenth century in England power had a broader base and royal favour was no longer a guaranteed way of obtaining land and wealth. The route to the top increasingly lay in outstanding success in a military career, in the law, the church or through trade in an ever expanding international market. Landownership formed a pyramid from the aristocracy down to the smallest yeoman farmer. There were three levels; the peers, the gentry and the freeholders and, it was possible, with some difficulty and the aid of burning ambition and friends in all the right places to break in on well established old-money circles.

West Wycombe Manor is set in a beautiful park and by a lake at Buckinghamshire in England. It is the perfect setting for a man of means who enjoys the good life. Its colonnaded west front is highly unusual, for a climate like England and recalls the happy times its original owner spent lazing in the loggia of an Italian Palazzo. While smaller than most of its owner, Sir Francis Dashwood’s friend’s country houses, today it encapsulates and reflects in architecture the society of a time when young men of privilege went in passionate pursuit of a civilized life.

Watch the Video or, Read On…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUm06t4Qf1U

Berkeley Square, London

In London much of the development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was in the hands of aristocratic landowners and mainly taking place on land available to the north and west of the city. Alongside their country estates and development interests they were also building, or extending, great houses in town so they could expand their increasingly lucrative international endeavour and enterprises.

Grand Tourist and his Tutor

The persistent phenomenon of the time was the Grand Tour of English noblemen, who would travel along with an entourage on a journey that would culminate in a visit to Italy and Rome and affect his life forever after. He would adopt Italian art, Italian mannerisms and overlay his speeches and correspondence with Italian phrases.

It became inevitable that when he came back to England to design an English estate, or to develop a piece of London and other important English towns and cities he would recall the example of Italy and create the ideal setting for those aspiring to see and be seen.

Portrait of a Young Man by Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano) 1530s - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The idea of a ‘compleat’ Gentleman had developed in ancient Greece five centuries before the Christ event. No other ancient people were so dynamic and creative as the Ancient Greeks, whose citizens while trying every form of action tempered it with the maxim of ‘nothing in excess’. Goodness, or arete, was an intrinsic excellence that existed in all things. A good man was considered to be ‘truly noble in hands and feet and mind, fashioned four square without blemish’.

For all men public and private honour were intimately related and if a man received a reward for his success it was not only a personal reward; it was an obligation that he owed to his city.

Chiswick House, London - Palladian villa built by the 3rd Earl of Burlington

This ideal was wide and generous and they devoted themselves to noble toil, to creating something new and splendid, and to keeping their bodies as fit as their minds. They strove to make order out of disorder and to live in harmony with their fellow citizens. They gave equal respect to mental and physical prowess because they believed the ideal life was one spent in pursuit of excellence in all things

By the fifteenth century at Florence in Italy this ideal achieved finely balanced attitudes. A Florentine gentleman worked for something beyond himself, whether in truth or beauty. He set small store by his own gratification, equating honour with the greater good. As a ‘Renaissance Man’ his pursuit of knowledge was only exceeded by his desire for more.

Becoming a ‘Renaisssance Man’ was an ideal many young English nobles would discover, and aspire to three centuries later during their Grand Tour. They spent up to five years traveling through France and Italy returning home via Switzerland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. It was an exciting prospect and, all roads led to Rome.

The great majority of Grand Tourists went to Italy because visits to Greece remained very much the exception due to difficulties of travel and the drastic political situation with the occupation of the Turks. The classical heritage of Rome then, for all intents and purposes at the time, civilization.

American Grand Tourist Joseph Allen Smith overlooking the Arno, by François-Xavier Fabre, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. His Grand Tour was undertaken between 1793 and 1807 as an aspiring diplomat. He traveled not just as a tourist, but as a representative of the world's first republic

Parents sent their sons away for years rather than months, usually in the care of a tutor or trusted family friend or both. The main mentor was often a clergyman and/or college fellow whose role was to safeguard his charge’s morals, oversee his studies and look after the practicalities of his travel and accommodation, including ensuring that their was no bed bugs.

They left London for Rome and Naples crossing the English Channel to Calais, and continuing across France, usually with a lengthy stopover in Paris to catch up with friends, see the sights, spend time discoursing in salons and purchasing the latest fashionable garments to wear.

There were two options for crossing into Italy either to travel cross the Alps or to book a sea voyage from southern France to Leghorn (today’s Livorno). English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and politician Horace Walpole’s description of his journey through the Alps in his letter to his friend Richard West would challenge the most hearty.

‘We were eight days in coming hither from Lyons; the four last in crossing the Alps. Such uncouth rocks, and such uncomely inhabitants!’ On their return to England some tourists traveled through Germany and the Low Countries.

Eighteenth century noble men felt a strong kinship to the age of first century Emperor Augustus through the works of the Roman poets. Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil), Poet Laureate Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace) and Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid), who had given their energies to satires, lyrical pieces and odes. From the third century in Western Europe their works were considered essential reading to help train young minds to think, to rationalise, to reason, to strive for harmony and order in the universe and, to be objective.

In Italy the grand tourist was well catered for because there were plenty of famous personalities to meet and the Opera and Catholic processions were something to see. There was a hope of gaining good health, enjoying entirely different food and natural phenomena to examine, such as Vesuvius blowing off steam. As well there were many amazing and interesting archaeological digs underway and treasures from antiquity coming up for sale and most importantly, you could have your portrait painted by Pompeo Batoni (108 – 1787). It was truly an exciting and fruitful time to be there.

To make a tour an’ take a whirl To learn bon ton, an’ see the worl’ Robbie Burns

Col Hon William Gordon by Pompeo Batoni

Artist Pompeo Batoni made a healthy living off his Grand Tourists by depicting them grandly. Italians of the eighteenth century did not care much for portraiture so much as they did for symbolism. Batoni was, for them, a revered painter of allegorical and devotional paintings commissioned by the Italian elite.

American born painter Benjamin West, who lived in London would complain while visiting Rome that Italian artists “talked of nothing, looked at nothing but the works of Pompeo Batoni”. For his British patrons however, Batoni was able to offer a powerful image of themselves to display proudly when they had returned home.

His portrait of Col Hon William Gordon has great emotional intensity and is also an interesting cultural comment. Issue 3 of publication by the Association of Art Historians 2004 says it was ‘Painted in Rome for return to Fyvie Castle in Aberdeenshire, the portrait is also implicated in Enlightenment debates about Scotland as a ‘primitive’ land and as a centre of intellectual and cultural achievement’. Col Gordon cuts a dashing figure in his plaid in front of the Colosseum standing next to the statue of a seated Roma, the personification of the city of Rome.

Andrea Palladio Antichita de Roma Frontespiec

The buried buildings of Herculaneum and Pompeii began revealing their treasures from 1738 and 1748 respectively, affecting contemporary interests and tastes. Learned societies and architects setting out intentionally to survey these ancient monuments and the increased interest provided accurate information about proportion, scale and ornamental detail with numerous publications coming into circulation.

The finest guide for travelers to Rome had actually been written in 1554 by successful sixteenth century Venetian architect Andrea Palladio. Entitled Le Antichita de Roma. It described the buildings of Ancient Rome and as might be expected of an architect of Andrea Palladio’s reputation the guide was closer to the original Roman buildings than any other. The ruins were viewed through his eyes, which is one of the reasons that Palladio exerted such an amazing influence on the course of architectural history, especially for young men from England who were in pursuit of the perfect house.

Charles Towneley and his Friends in the Towneley Gallery, 33 Park Street, Westminster (1781-83) by Johann Zoffany. Boys with their Toys.

A whole new genre of art was invented and an army of copyists would reproduce any old master painting of your choice, for a price, from the splendid selection on display in the art galleries. Portrait painters, illustrators and landscape artists all prospered, or at least survived, by providing memories of the British in Italy. Some copies of European paintings were so convincing they fooled many into believing they were the real deal.

Taking home a cast or a copy of an original was not shameful. It was the only way to share with friends and family what the years away had meant and how much you had learned about the heritage of Greece and Rome. However if you were after a really outstanding piece of classical sculpture, or an original High Renaissance master such as Titian or Raphael while they were extremely difficult to find, they were not impossible if you had the right connections.

Country Gentleman Charles Towneley (1733 – 1805) formed a formidable collection of antiquities, which the British Museum purchased from the family in 1805. It was housed in his purpose built town house in the west of London in his lifetime so he and his friends could discuss the merits of each piece.

What is significant is that many of them appear in a conversation piece painted by artist Johann Zoffany, himself a luminary of the day. In August 1781 Townley wrote to his dealer in Rome ‘Mr Zoffany is painting… a room in my house, wherein he introduces what Subjects he chuses in my collection. It will be a picture of extraordinary effect & truth…’

Artist and social commentator William Hogarth campaigned vigorously against fashionable taste. His witty cartoons also assisted in expanding more serious debate about issues affecting the society of his day, especially the idea that rich people are automatically happy.

Marriage a la Mode - 1 of a Series by William Hogarth

His Marriage a la Mode series was a comment on the dissolute lives many of them really led because they were so unhappy in marriages arranged by parents wanting to further expand their own estates. The whole sad story starts in the mansion of the Earl Squander, who is arranging to marry his son off to the daughter of a wealthy merchant and it all ends tragically with the murder of the son and suicide of the daughter.

By mid century London was the largest city in Western Europe with 750,000 inhabitants. (Edinburgh 57,000 Dublin 90000). It offered a different quality of life and nowhere else in Britain was so urban; no other city so exciting or so shocking!. A great night out was to gape at the antics of the beau monde while they were out and about on the town.

You could do that at Vauxhall Gardens, which occupied about 12 acres across the Thames from Westminster Abbey. Class distinction did not apply, so for young aristocratic risk takers with the ready necessary it was dangerous, and glamorous. For rogues, ruffians, pimps and prostitutes it was a place where they could earn a good living, and for everyone else in between it was to coin a contemporary term, ‘a great gaze’.

Just up the river was Ranelagh Gardens. English writer, critic and renowned conversationalist Dr. Samuel Johnson said Ranelagh produced ‘an expansion and gay sensation‘ such as he had never experienced anywhere else before. It certainly must have been wonderful to be there on June 19, 1764 when eight year old child prodigy Austrian Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave a concert.

The young genius, his father and sister stayed in London for just over one year, not departing until 17 September 1765. Wolfgang’s father reported in a letter home ‘What we have experienced here surpasses everything’ .

Pantheon at Rome and its Grand Tourists

The Grand Tour was so often protracted it is not surprising that many great treasures found their way to England’s shores including paintings by the Italian artist Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Il Canaletto, (1697-1768).

The son of a theatrical scene-painter Giovanni had studied in Rome and between 1746 and 1756 worked in London. Following his return to Venice English grand tourists, guided by English entrepreneur, Joseph Smith who lived there, sought him out. Smith’s own collection was later sold to King George III in 1758 and the British Royal Collection still has the best selection of Canaletto’s works anywhere.

Grand Canal Venice, Canaletto, National Gallery, London

In the summer of 1772 German born artist Johann Zoffany left London for Florence and he would not return until 1779. Zoffany was commissioned by Queen Charlotte to paint ‘the Florence Gallery’ and to do that he needed to enlist the help of influential Englishmen, such as Sir Horace Mann and George, 3rd Earl Cowper who were living there.

Paintings were brought in from the Pitti Palace so he could paint them in situ, and he was able to repay his patrons by including portraits of them in what is an amazing conversation piece, which caused a great deal of criticism when it was put on display in London.

The prime minister’s son Horace Walpole, himself a considerable wit and man of letters, called it ‘a flock of travelling boys, and one does not know, nor care whom’. Zoffany was careful to include himself in the piece for posterity and the connoisseurs, diplomats and other Grand Tourists he included are all identifiable.

Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johann Zoffany Royal Collection, Windsor Castle

Returning Grand Tourists arrived back in England with bags bulging. Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington (1694-1753) returned to England from his Grand Tour of Europe and Italy just in time for his 21st birthday.

He brought with him artist and designer William Kent, whom he had met on his travels, as well as 878 pieces of luggage, containing numerous treasures of paintings, statues, objects of virtu, bas reliefs, a marble table, porphry vases and twelve miniatures, not to mention the set of silver dessert baskets from Paris, a bountiful supply of books and fourteen pairs of gloves!

Burlington and his friends were all heavily influenced by the many and varied essays on the subject as well as their travels where they had seen paintings in which architecture and nature were blended together in a pictorial effect. Burlington and Kent would contribute greatly to the Quest for Nature.

Detail Claude Lorrain Landscape

Of great influence were the paintings by French artist Claude Lorrain, Claude Gellée, dit le Lorrain) (c. 1600 – 21 or 23 November 1682) they had seen on their grand tour. They featured hills and valleys, great clouds, splendid trees with soft foliage with buildings, or groups of buildings of classical ancestry. These romantic concepts were fused together with the search for an ‘Arcadian’ idyll

These new ‘Rulers of Taste’ sought that moment of perfection inspired by all their intellectual and poetic notions, which now played a major part in the broadening their sensibilities. Buildings came to be appreciated not merely as architecture, but for the thoughts and the feelings they inspired and the resultant “Cult of the Picturesque” would be debated well into the next century.

Garden designer extraordinaire Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1715-1783) was in the perfect position to offer returning Grand Tourists a gardening style that suited there newly found sensibilities. He had worked with landscape style innovator William Kent in the garden he was creating at Stowe and found himself in a position to offer his clients an intimate, personal view of nature by ‘softening nature’s harshness and copying her graceful touch’. Brown’s style of natural countryside was the sort of place where you could believe that nymphs and shepherds came together with their elegant eighteenth century counterparts, and felt comfortably at home.

The Bridge at Stourhead in a landscape of autumnal colours

He transformed great tracts of the English landscape into natural curves crowning them with clumps of trees. He used mostly elm, oak, beech, lime, Scots fir, plane, larch and the Cedar of Lebanon. At Stourhead in Wiltshire the contrived circuit walk around the lake was built for the enjoyment of its new young owner banker Henry Hoare “The Magnificent”. Its interplay of light and shadow were a triumph for the contrived and well-laid out park.

Horace Walpole said ‘Such was the effect of his genius …..so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken for it’. How right he was. Brown and his colleagues, during the course of the eighteenth and nineteen centuries would change the whole shape and character of the English countryside from one end of the country to the other in their Quest for Nature. It was human intervention on a monumental scale.

Temple of Flora at Stourhead

THE classical buildings in the garden at Stourhead were a reminder for Henry Hoare of his wonderful years spent in Italy. They were also suitable for all sorts of entertainments during the course of the eighteenth century, including playing music by Mozart. Their principles of design were based on Roman and Greek models, although scaled to be a miniature version, their parts in harmonious proportion to their whole.

Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water seem to strive again
Not chaos like together crushed and bruised
But as the world, harmoniously confused;
Where order in variety we see,
And where, though all things differ, all agree Alexander Pope

Sir Francis Dashwood, 15th Baron le Despence

Sir Francis Dashwood, 2nd Baronet of West Wycombe Park was one of the centuries most colourful characters who, by all accounts, was seldom sober. He also was 2nd Postmaster General, Master of the Great Wardrobe, Member of Parliament and Chancellor of the Exchequer.

In 1734 at London Sir Francis Dashwood founded the Society of Dilettanti (dilettante (from the Italian dilettare – to delight) for men who had completed their grand tour of Europe. Over the course of the century the Society of Dilettanti would sponsor serious archaeological expeditions, assemble celebrated collections of antiques and art and advance the study of classical art, architecture and music and science.

Society of Diletannti by William Say

The popular dining club met in Italy, and at home, where they combined ribald revelry, wit, complete irreverence with a serious study of antiquity, which they all associated with the good times spent in Italy, albeit at their parents expense. They had the latest and best wines on hand to toast exalted beauties and life . They contemplated a lengthy future for the arts and culture and having such interests and concerns gradually became the measure of a man of refined taste and style.

Dashwood also revived the Hellfire Club. He went ‘clubbing’ with his clique, the so-called ‘Medmenham Monks’ on the banks of the Thames at Medmenham Abbey just 6 km away from his country house. He also revived the remains of the Abbey as a picturesque ruin. Over the entrance doorway to the a garden, which had been purpose built,  it said Fais ce que tu voudras – a shortened version of Aime et fais ce que tu veux… by St Augustine – Love, and do what you want.

It seems they did because they filled the garden with erotic statues and a shrine dedicated to the erect penis, rather than the penitent penis. Yes, Sir Francis Dashwood’s Italian styled villa at West Wycombe Park was the perfect Temple to Taste, built by one its prime rulers, who fashioned himself as a ‘compleat’ gentleman. But was he?

An eighteenth and nineteenth century gentleman’s broad ranging education, went hand in hand with an improvement in wine processes and a distinct desire to appreciate wine for its own sake and it became a subject for serious study. Connoisseurship became an important concern and men’s clubs devoted to pursuing a passion for art, architecture and the decorative arts sprang up everywhere. This in itself spawned many new trades and expanded employment for those catering to their peace loving luxurious seemingly happy leisure filled lifestyle. After all the art of pleasure is a serious business.

Carolyn McDowall © The Culture Concept 2010, 2011

Related posts:

1. EVOLUTION OF ART, DESIGN & STYLE
   Course Outline
2. CIVILISED: At the Beginnings of Art
3. The Culture Concept Circle – You Tube Channel