Period: c19th

‘For the curiosity of the article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)

‘For the curiosity of the article’: Excerpts from Architectural Drawing (1870)

William Burges

The following introductory text and drawings are reproduced from William Burges’ Architectural Drawing (1870). Each of the drawings has been chosen for its graphic interest or for the content of Burges’ commentary – which covers the problems of surveying buildings, the limits of nineteenth-century book printing, and his personal curiosity in… Read More

The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel

The Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel

Zachary Torres

The plans of the Ruined Temple and Oberrealta Chapel were drawn nearly two hundred years apart, and yet they both speak to the Ruskian timelessness of the ruin. The temple and chapel are representative of their respective ages, with the former alluding to Romanticism’s longing for a pastoral past free… Read More

Entering the Imperial Palace

Entering the Imperial Palace

Will Jennings

‘What a subject for John Martin!’ exclaimed a passer-by, as the hungry flames flickered up York Minster. Maybe they had in mind his apocalyptic painting The Fall of Nineveh, exhibited that same year at the Western Exchange on Old Bond Street and reproduced widely as a mezzotint print. Unbeknown to… Read More

The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection

The Edge of Architecture: Cornices in the Drawing Matter collection

Editors

The following group of drawings are presented here as additional illustrations to Maarten Delbeke’s essay The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture.

The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture

The Cornice: The Edge of Architecture

Maarten Delbeke

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

In the Archive: New and Found 2

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

Stories from Architecture: Behind the Lines at Drawing Matter

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

In the Archive: New and Found

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

The I’Ansons: A Dynasty of London Architects & Surveyors

Peter Jefferson Smith

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 Pursuit of Gothic

The Pursuit of Gothic

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

The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh

The Italian Job: Anthony Salvin, Sir John Benson and the Royal Cork Yacht Club, Cóbh

Tom Spalding

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

Writing Prize 2021: Savinien Petit’s Chapelle a deux salles avec luminaire

Raphael Haque

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