Inigo's Stones
Inigo's Stones

Author: Tom Williamson

Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd

Published: 2012-04-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1780881207

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Written by a geologist rather than an art historian, Inigo’s Stones has a down to earth narrative which reveals Inigo Jones as a stone expert who dealt with masons to became a shrewd businessman, bringing Portland stones to London, and founding the modern Portland stone industry.Why are so many of London’s famous buildings, for example Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, the Bank of England, the government offices in Whitehall, faced with stones from the Isle of Portland, more than a hundred miles away? Until now the reasons that prompted famous architect Inigo Jones to bring blocks of this creamy limestone all the way by sea from the Royal Manor of Portland and thereby found the modern Portland stone industry had been something of a mystery.Working with archival research specialist James Derriman, geologist Tom Williamson has now reconstructed a scenario that solves the mystery. It is a complex tale that involves the marriage of Inigo’s chief Banqueting House mason Nicholas Stone to the daughter of the City Mason of booming Amsterdam, a nasty incident at the stone-loading pier at Portland and Inigo Jones’s struggles to pay stone workers from King James’s bankrupt Treasury.The new findings presented in Inigo’s Stones also see Inigo Jones studying Roman stones and marbles in Italy with Lord and Lady Arundel, initiating the first geological study of Stonehenge, searching for Portland stones big enough to replicate the Carystian marble monoliths of the Roman temple of Antoninus and Faustina in London and procuring Irish marbles to reflect imperial glory on his friend King Charles I. Inigo emerges not just as a Court propagandist and Vitruvian architect, but also as a resourceful businessman doing his best to cope at a time when the government was even shorter of cash than it is today.Reflecting on the questions raised by Inigo’s work for the Stuart kings, the author Tom Williamson extends the story to cover the whole field of how rulers have used stones and marbles to project imperial power. Focusing on the stones of three once-mighty empires, the Roman, the Mughal and the British, the book ends with a surprising twist.

Understanding Building Stones and Stone Buildings
Understanding Building Stones and Stone Buildings

Author: John A. Hudson

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2019-04-24

Total Pages: 524

ISBN-13: 1351585339

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This book covers the wide spectrum of subjects relating to obtaining and using building stones, starting with their geological origin and then describing the nature of granites, volcanics, limestones, sandstones, flint, metamorphic stones, breccias and conglomerates, with emphasis being placed on how to recognise the different stones via the many illustrated examples from Great Britain and other countries. The life of a building stone is explained from its origin in the quarry, through its exposure to the elements when used for a building, to its eventual deterioration. The structure of stone buildings is then discussed, with explanations of the mechanics of pillars, lighthouses and walls, arches, bridges, buttresses and roof vaults, plus castles and cathedrals. The sequence of the historical architectural styles of stone buildings is explained—from the early days through to postmodern buildings. Special attention is paid to two famous architects: the Roman Vitruvius and the English Sir Christopher Wren who designed and supervised the construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. To demonstrate many of the concepts presented, two exemplary stone buildings are described in detail: the Albert Memorial in London and Durham Cathedral in northern England. The former building is interesting because it is comprised of a cornucopia of different building stones and the latter building because of its architecture and sandstone decay mechanisms. In the final Chapter, ruined stone buildings are discussed—the many reasons for their decay and the possibility of their ‘rebirth’ via digital recording of their geometry. The book has over 350 pages and is illustrated with more than 450 diagrams and colour photographs of both the various stones and the associated stone buildings. Readers’ knowledge of the subject will be greatly enhanced by these images and the related explanatory text. A wide-ranging references and bibliography section is also included.

Enriching Architecture
Enriching Architecture

Author: Christine Casey

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2023-01-26

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 1800083548

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Refinement and enrichment of surfaces in stone, wood and plaster is a fundamental aspect of early modern architecture which has been marginalised by architectural history. Enriching Architecture aims to retrieve and rehabilitate surface achievement as a vital element of early modern buildings in Britain and Ireland. Rejected by modernism, demeaned by the conceptual ‘turn’ and too often reduced to its representative or social functions, we argue for the historical legitimacy of creative craft skill as a primary agent in architectural production. However, in contrast to the connoisseurial and developmental perspectives of the past, this book is concerned with how surfaces were designed, achieved and experienced. The contributors draw upon the major rethinking of craft and materials within the wider cultural sphere in recent years to deconstruct traditional, oppositional ways of thinking about architectural production. This is not a craft for craft’s sake argument but an effort to embed the tangible findings of conservation and curatorial research within an evidence-led architectural history that illuminates the processes of early modern craftsmanship. The book explores broad themes of surface treatment such as wainscot, rustication, plasterwork, and staircase embellishment together with chapters focused on virtuoso buildings and set pieces which illuminate these themes.

Between Design and Making
Between Design and Making

Author: Andrew Tierney

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2024-07-08

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1800086954

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The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a high point in the intersection between design and workmanship. Skilled artisans, creative and technically competent agents within their own field, worked across a wide spectrum of practice that encompassed design, supervision and execution, and architects relied heavily on the experience they brought to the building site. Despite this, the bridge between design and tacit artisanal knowledge has been an underarticulated factor in the architectural achievement of the early modern era. Building on the shift towards a collaborative and qualitative analysis of architectural production, Between Design and Making re-evaluates the social and professional fabric that binds design to making, and reflects on the asymmetry that has emerged between architecture and craft. Combining analysis of buildings, archival material and eighteenth-century writings, the authors draw out the professional, pedagogical and social links between architectural practice and workmanship. They argue for a process-oriented understanding of architectural production, exploring the obscure centre ground of the creative process: the scribbled, sketched, hatched and annotated beginnings of design on the page; the discussions, arguments and revisions in the forging of details; and the grappling with stone, wood and plaster on the building site that pushed projects from conception to completion.

The Jacobean Grand Tour
The Jacobean Grand Tour

Author: Edward Chaney

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2013-12-13

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 0857724452

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Although the eighteenth century is traditionally seen as the age of the Grand Tour, it was in fact the continental travel of Jacobean noblemen which really constituted the beginning of the Tour as an institutionalized phenomenon. James I's peace treaty with Spain in 1604 rendered travel to Catholic Europe both safer and more respectable than it had been under the Tudors and opened up the continent to a new generation of aristocratic explorers, enquirers and adventurers. This book examines the political and cultural significance of the encounters that resulted, focusing in particular on two of England's greatest, and newly united, families: the Cecils and the Howards. It also considers the ways in which Protestants and Catholics experienced the aesthetic and intellectual stimulus of European travel and how the cultural experiences of the travellers formed the essential ingredients in what became the Grand Tour.