Decorative plasterwork was created by skilled craftsmen, and for over four hundred years it has been an essential part of the interior decoration of the British country house. In this detailed and comprehensive study, Geoffrey Beard has created a book that will delight the eye and inform the interested reader. For those who have sometimes been puzzled by the complexities of plaster decoration it will be a most useful work of reference on a fascinating art form, about which no book has been published for nearly fifty years. After discussing the part that patrons played in commissioning and financing these beautiful decorations, a useful chapter is devoted to materials and methods of work and here the author describes the ingredients of good plaster; he has studied the work of present-day English plasterers and Swiss stucco-restorers in order to establish precisely how the materials of plaster and stucco were composed and used.
Sumptuous plasterwork ornament is a celebrated and distinctive feature of Ireland's 18th-century domestic architecture. Migrant craftsmen brought the modeling skills and decorative forms of European plasterwork and influenced the emergence of a prolific and idiosyncratic local production. In this volume, specialists from Ireland, Britain, and Europe explore early modern decoration from a range of perspectives that include formal analysis, discussion of technique and workshop practices, and documentation of the social and economic life of artisans. Contents include: Is stucco just the icing on the cake? * Decorative plasterwork in England and Ireland, 1550-1650 * The complex interplay between style and technology * Stucco sculptors from the Lombard lakes in 18th-century Ireland * Baroque stucco in Bohemia and Moravia * 18th-century stucco in Germany * The earning power of stuccatori * Rococo stuccowork in the Netherlands * Bartholomew Cramillion and continental rococo * Recent conservation of Irish 18th-century modeled plaster * Plasterwork production in Britain and Ireland * Decorative designs for quadratura and plasterwork * New light on the court chapel at Wurzburg.
The essays in this book, all by distinguished historians, illuminate the main activities, preoccupations and aspirations of the families whose territorial power and local leadership made them a central factor in medieval Scottish society. Issues discussed include the influence of Anglo-Norman England on earlier medieval Scotland, patterns of land accumulation by the aristocracy, noble residences, the legal and administrative aspects of baronial lordship, clientage, and dealings between magnates and the Church. Throughout, the essays stress the importance of recognising that, before the Wars of Independence, the nobility of Scotland was closely bound by ties of kinship and property with the nobility in England and emphasise that the common assumption of perpetual opposition between baronage and the Crown is a myth. First published in 1985, these essays remain essential reading on the subject.
The period 1660–1720 saw the foundation of modern London. The city was transformed post-Fire from a tight warren of medieval timber-framed buildings into a vastly expanded, regularised landscape of brick houses laid out in squares and spacious streets. This work for the first time examines in detail the building boom and the speculative developers who created that landscape. It offers a wealth of new information on their working practices, the role of craftsmen and the design thinking which led to the creation of a new prototype for English housing. The book concentrates on the mass-produced houses of 'the middling sort' which saw the adoption of classicism on a large scale in this country for the first time. McKellar shows, however, that the 'new city' maintained a surprising degree of continuity with existing patterns of urban used and traditional architecture. The book presents the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth century as a distinct phase in London's architectural development and offers a radical reinterpretations of the adoption of Renaissance styles and ideas at the level of the everyday, challenging conventional interpretations of their use and reception in this country.
For every great country house of the Georgian period, there was usually also a town house. Chatsworth, for example, the home of the Devonshires, has officially been recognised as one of the country's favourite national treasures - but most of its visitors know little of Devonshire House, which the family once owned in the capital. In part, this is because town houses were often leased, rather than being passed down through generations as country estates were. But, most crucially, many London town houses, including Devonshire House, no longer exist, having been demolished in the early twentieth century. This book seeks to place centre-stage the hugely important yet hitherto overlooked town houses of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, exploring the prime position they once occupied in the lives of families and the nation as a whole. It explores the owners, how they furnished and used these properties, and how their houses were judged by the various types of visitor who gained access.
William Millar's classic book "Plastering Plain and Decorative" is universally referred to as the 'Plasterer's Bible'. It was first published in 1897 and was clearly a great success, with a second edition following a couple of years later in 1899 and a third edition in 1905 (a reprint of the first edition is available from Donhead). In 1927 the publishers, B. T. Batsford Ltd, decided that it was time to republish Millar's 'magnus opus', but that the fourth edition should be revised and updated. They asked George P. Bankart, an architect/craftsman and author, who had already written another book for them, to take on this task. George Percy Bankart was an architect highly influenced by the 'Arts and Crafts' movement, who had chosen to work as a decorative craftsman. The 'Arts and Crafts' was an English movement dedicated to the idea that architecture could be inspired by a revival of traditional building crafts and materials. It started in the second half of the 19th century, based on the writings of Ruskin and was driven by the ideas Morris, amongst many others; and carried on into the first quarter of the 20th century. Bankart was born in Leicester on the 20th January 1866, and was a great friend of Ernest W. Gimson, another Leicester born architect, just over a year his elder. Both men studied and became architects, and shared a creative passion for the handicrafts. Whilst Gimson's career included embroidery design, traditional chair-making and furniture design, as well as decorative modeled plasterwork, Bankart concentrated primarily on plasterwork. Their different activities were true to the ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement, and their designs reflect the movement's interest in a return to nature. Bankart's career as an author started with "The Art of The Plasterer", which was published by B. T. Batsford Ltd in 1909. He seems to have taken a break from writing until, together with his son G. Edward Bankart, he produced two books "Modern Plasterwork Construction" in 1926, followed in 1927 by "Modern Plasterwork Design", both published by the Architectural Press. Also in 1927 he was back with B. T. Batsford Ltd for the publication of this fourth and revised edition of 'Millar'.
