Period: c19th
The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture
21 February 2022
The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture21 February 2022
The following essay was first published as the introduction to ‘The Cornice’, GTA Papers 6 (2021). It is one of the outcomes of the work done in preparation for the exhibition The Hidden Horizontal: The Cornice in Architecture and Art, which was on show at the Graphische Sammlung of ETH… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found 2
12 January 2022
In the Archive: New and Found 212 January 2022
– Editors
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. The New and Found series is an informal miscellany, which allows us to show some recent acquisitions together with material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that you may not have seen before. New Julia Bloomfield recalls a dinner with Frank… Read More
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter
13 December 2021
Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter13 December 2021
– Adrian Forty, Niall Hobhouse and Philippa Lewis
This film was recorded in the Drawing Matter archive on the afternoon of Friday 28 November. It records a conversation between Philippa Lewis, Adrian Forty and Niall Hobhouse, about some of the drawings behind Philippa’s new book, Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter (2021). The film was… Read More
In the Archive: New and Found
1 December 2021
In the Archive: New and Found1 December 2021
– Editors
Click on drawings to move and enlarge. The New and Found series is an informal miscellany, which allows us to show some recent acquisitions together with material in the archive or the libraries at Shatwell that you may not have seen before. New On the digital planchest this time is… Read More
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors
30 November 2021
The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors30 November 2021
The following excerpt from Peter Jefferson Smith’s The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors (2019) charts the involvement of three generations of the I’Anson dynasty (Edward Sr [1775–1853]; Edward Jr [1812–1888]; and Edward Blakeway [1843–1912]) in the design of the Corn Exchange in Mark Lane, City of London.… Read More
The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh
27 October 2021
The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh27 October 2021
Anthony Salvin (1799–1881) was a noted English architect of country houses and a pioneer restorer of historic monuments. In the latter sphere, he undertook significant interventions at Windsor and Alnwick Castles and at the Tower of London. For example, he is largely responsible for the way we see the yards… Read More
Writing Prize 2021: Savinien Petit’s Chapelle a deux salles avec luminaire
18 October 2021
Writing Prize 2021: Savinien Petit’s Chapelle a deux salles avec luminaire18 October 2021
When art crosses paths with the language of architecture, odd things can occur. Savinien Petit was an academic painter who is little-known today. Conventional even for his own time, his taste at times did not exceed drawing children in clouds, but mostly he created religious scenes in traditional frescoes for churches, work which was… Read More
PC Harry Woodley: Plans of No 131 Cornwall Street, 1902
17 September 2021
PC Harry Woodley: Plans of No 131 Cornwall Street, 190217 September 2021
Extracted from Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter by Philippa Lewis, published by MIT Press © 2021. Preorder the book here. The drawings around which Stories from Architecture are written are all part of the Drawing Matter collection. Some of the texts were first published as ‘Behind the Lines’. It was a short walk… Read More
John Nash: Designs for Langham House, ca. 1812–1816
6 September 2021
John Nash: Designs for Langham House, ca. 1812–18166 September 2021
Extracted from Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter by Philippa Lewis, published by MIT Press © 2021. Preorder the book here. The drawings around which Stories from Architecture are written are all part of the Drawing Matter collection. Some of the texts were first published as ‘Behind the Lines’. Nash… Read More
Survey: John Goldicutt, Temple of Vespasian
25 August 2021
Survey: John Goldicutt, Temple of Vespasian25 August 2021
Climbing and surveying the ruins of Rome was potentially dangerous, and there are reports of near-fatal accidents involving falls from height. George Wightwick, who would be employed by Soane on his return from Italy, advised students ‘not to risk [their] neck in measuring, for the thousandth time, a Roman ruin’.… Read More
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House
25 July 2021
Cassius Goldsmith’s Grey Weather Gate House25 July 2021
I find myself lost in the woods, then reorientated, guided by the centralised chimney. Standing dead centre in front of the gate lodge, my gaze is lifted to the space between chimney and sky, between foreground or background. A cloud of white smoke disguises itself as an English cloud, passing… Read More
Cartographies of the Imagination
4 June 2021
Cartographies of the Imagination4 June 2021
– Kirsty Badenoch and Sayan Skandarajah
Drawing place is illusory. Maps may begin as transcriptions of a worldly order – a semblance of truth and objectivity – but in doing so, become acts of world-building that both belong to and are entirely removed from their starting point. In 2019, we first visited Shatwell Farm in the… Read More
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis
27 May 2021
Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis27 May 2021
This study of Le Palais de Darius a Persepolis was made by Pascal Coste (b. 1787 Marseille, France) in 1840 as part of an archeological survey of the Persian City of Persepolis. Through a combination of plan and perspective, Coste portrayed the symmetrical arrangement and elaborate construction of the ancient… Read More
Keshi Ghat
13 May 2021
Keshi Ghat13 May 2021
Seeing is a reaching out, a kind of metaphorical touching that involves one’s whole being and is reciprocal. Amita Singh If you hadn’t read the title of the drawing, you would have probably guessed that this would have been a riverfront mosque in India. I did too. The courtyards reminding… Read More
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review
4 May 2021
The Zilsel Thesis: A Review of Strata: William Smith’s Geological Maps (2020): Review4 May 2021
In a series of essays and lectures developed between 1939 and 1943, the philosopher of science Edgar Zilsel identified three distinct sources of knowledge in the Renaissance. In the late-medieval period, writes Zilsel, the traditional learning associated with the universities was still theological and scholastic in character. The texts preserved… Read More
14 Wine Street, Bristol
29 April 2021
14 Wine Street, Bristol29 April 2021
Whilst leafing through the Drawing Matter collection, this drawing from 1885, by architect Henry Crisp, caught my eye. The drawing depicts a new shopfront and facade to be grafted on to the existing structure of 14 Wine Street, Bristol. Initially, the design struck me as remarkably contemporary and I came… Read More
The Beaux-Arts Tradition
29 April 2021
The Beaux-Arts Tradition29 April 2021
– Basile Baudez and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger
The following text has been excerpted from Living with Architecture as Art, the recently published catalogue of Peter May’s collection of drawings, models and architectural artefacts. The catalogue is edited by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger and published in two generously illustrated volumes. The first volume includes essays by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, Basile Baudez,… Read More
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics
12 April 2021
Shaping Landscape: Schinkel and Erratics12 April 2021
It is the unique trait of the section drawing to fragment the singularity of built form, to allow the reading of a building as a series of individual pieces, and thereby delay our innate predilection for gestalt. Much like an erratic (in geology, an erratic is a material moved by geologic forces from… Read More
Balzac architecte (1856)
9 April 2021
Balzac architecte (1856)9 April 2021
No drawing, nor stone in the ground, remains of the dream house near Paris which the young novelist was never able to complete. By the time Balzac resold the whole property in 1840, with debts of 100,000 francs, it had collapsed back into the landscape, together with the terraced plantations… Read More
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)
6 April 2021
Adam Bede’s ‘Discourse on Building’ (1859)6 April 2021
This speech on building – and architects – was made by Adam to Mr Poyser in Chapter 49 of George Eliot’s novel. It was pointed out to us by the Eliot scholar, Dermot Coleman, who added that ‘it is generally a safe bet that views on such matters expressed by Adam… Read More
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy
9 February 2021
Sir John Soane’s Museum: Bound Legacy9 February 2021
John Britton, a topographer and antiquarian by trade, began preparations to publish a guidebook to John Soane’s house-museum in 1825. The earliest mention of such an endeavour appears in a letter to Soane dated 3 November, in which Britton outlines his desire to ‘produce a vol to surprise the public, and… Read More
The Architect and the Matador
8 February 2021
The Architect and the Matador8 February 2021
On one sheet, a matador;on the other, a design,with measurements for a cathedral pier. What unites these drawingsis provenance:both, apparently, executedby the architectEugène Viollet-le-Ducin meetings. As Viollet-le-Duc’s mind wanderedfrom doodle to design,my attention,beholding the drawings,is drawn between the two sheets; drawn, by the insistently connective impulseof looking,into associations. Between architect… Read More
Viollet-le-Duc: Ruins in Reverse
22 January 2021
Viollet-le-Duc: Ruins in Reverse22 January 2021
In 1844, architect Eugéne Viollet-le-Duc won a competition to supervise the restoration of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Blasted and defaced during the Revolution, the condition of the great church testified less to the promises of an infant republic than to the bloody throes of its birth. For its restoration, the Comité des… Read More
The Pursuit of Gothic
10 November 2021
The Pursuit of Gothic10 November 2021
– Rosemary Hill
William Gilpin notoriously suggested that the ruins of Tintern Abbey could be improved by ‘a mallet judiciously used’. [1] The next generation saw in the architecture of the Middle Ages something more than an assortment of ornamental landscape features, but it did not begin to understand it. Uvedale Price, whose… Read More
plan elevation detail religion DMC