Paul Mellon Centre Book Night
From the PMC:
Winter Book Night
Paul Mellon Centre, London, 13 December 2023, 5.30pm
Join us for our winter Book Night to celebrate our latest publications. Each author will give a short talk discussing the research behind their book, followed by the opportunity to ask questions. Afterwards, there will be drinks, canapes, and a chance to meet the authors.
Session 1
• Finola O’Kane, Landscape Design and Revolution in Ireland and the United States
• Mark Crinson, Shock City: Image and Architecture in Industrial Manchester
Session 2
• Tim Clayton, James Gillray: A Revolution in Satire
• Tom Young, Unmaking the East India Company: British Art and Political Reform in Colonial India, c. 1813–1858
• Kirsty Sinclair Dootson, The Rainbow’s Gravity: Colour, Materiality and British Modernity
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And Clayton’s book was recently named Book of the Year by Apollo.
New Book | The Art of the Illustrated Book
From Thames & Hudson:
Julius Bryant, ed., The Art of the Illustrated Book: History and Design (London: Thames & Hudson, 2022), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-0500480694, £45 / $60.
This is the story of the illustrated book, from the earliest printed examples to the present day, told through the collections of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London—a library that was created to bring together examples of superlative book-making on almost every subject. Gathered here are some of the most influential, compelling and striking examples of the illustrated book, arranged thematically in chapters devoted to subjects such as art, literature, religion, architecture, natural history, fashion, and shopping. Brimming with innovative and beautiful examples, ranging from well-known titles, such as Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament and James Audubon’s Birds of America, to other wonderful but less familiar publications, this collection offers a fascinating overview of some of the finest illustrated books ever created—demonstrating their enduring appeal.
Julius Bryant is the Emeritus Keeper of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
c o n t e n t s
Introduction
1 Religion
2 Natural History
3 Travel
4 Fables & Folk Tales
5 Literature
6 Art Making
7 Art History
8 Architecture
9 Ornament and Pattern
10 Festivals
11 World Fairs
12 Fashion
13 Shopping
New Book | In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral
Now available in paperback from Yale UP:
Margaret Willes, In the Shadow of St. Paul’s Cathedral: The Churchyard that Shaped London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-0300249835 (hardcover), $35 / ISBN: 978-0300273380 (paperback), $17.
The extraordinary story of St. Paul’s Churchyard—the area of London that was a center of social and intellectual life for more than a millennium
St. Paul’s Cathedral stands at the heart of London, an enduring symbol of the city. Less well known is the neighborhood at its base that hummed with life for over a thousand years, becoming a theater for debate and protest, knowledge, and gossip. For the first time Margaret Willes tells the full story of the area. She explores the dramatic religious debates at Paul’s Cross, the bookshops where Shakespeare came in search of inspiration, and the theater where boy actors performed plays by leading dramatists. After the Great Fire of 1666, the Churchyard became the center of the English literary world, its bookshops nestling among establishments offering luxury goods. This remarkable community came to an abrupt end with the Blitz. First the soaring spire of Old St. Paul’s and then Wren’s splendid Baroque dome had dominated the area, but now the vibrant secular society that had lived in their shadow was no more.
Margaret Willes, formerly publisher at the National Trust, is author of several books, including The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn, Reading Matters, and The Gardens of the British Working Class. She lives in London.
New Book | The Notebook
From Profile Books:
Roland Allen, The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper (London: Profile Books, 2023), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-1788169325, £25.
Diaries, sketchbooks, common-places, notebooks, ledgers, and ships’ logs: how the blank book changed the way we think, and helped us change the world. The first history of the notebook, a simple invention that changed the way the world thinks.
We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did this simple invention come from? How did they revolutionise our lives, and why are they such powerful tools for creativity? And how can using a notebook help you change the way you think? In this wide-ranging story, Roland Allen reveals all the answers. Ranging from the bustling markets of medieval Florence to the quiet studies of our greatest thinkers, he follows a trail of dazzling ideas, revealing how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking. He tells the notebook stories of artists like Leonardo and Frida Kahlo, scientists from Isaac Newton to Marie Curie, and writers from Chaucer to Henry James. We watch Darwin developing his theory of evolution in tiny pocketbooks, see Agatha Christie plotting a hundred murders in scrappy exercise books, and learn how Bruce Chatwin unwittingly inspired the creation of the Moleskine. On the way we meet a host of cooks, kings, sailors, fishermen, musicians, engineers, politicians, adventurers, and mathematicians, who all used their notebooks as a space for thinking and to shape the modern world. In an age of AI and digital overload, the humble notebook is more relevant than ever. Allen shows how bullet points can combat ADHD, journals can ease PTSD, and patient diaries soften the trauma of reawakening from coma. The everyday act of moving a pen across paper can have profound consequences, changing the way we think and feel: making us more creative, more productive—and happier.
Roland Allen is a publisher and author who lives in Hove. He studied at Manchester University and works in book (and notebook) publishing. He has written about subjects as diverse as bicycles and bread, kept a diary for decades, and enjoys stationery a little too much.
New Book | Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe
In October, Christopher Baker was announced as the incoming editor of The Burlington Magazine (replacing Michael Hall, who has held the position since 2017). Baker’s book on Liotard has just been published in the UK by Unicorn and will be available in the US market soon.
Christopher Baker, Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe (Lewes: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2023), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1911397595, £30 / $45.
Jean Etienne Liotard (1702–1789) was one of the most accomplished, idiosyncratic, and witty artists of eighteenth-century Europe. Born in Geneva, he pursued a remarkable career, travelling across the continent and the Near East, portraying a riveting cross-section of society. Liotard worked in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Venice, Constantinople, and Vienna and excelled as a specialist in the delicate art of pastel. He became renowned for the uncanny realism of his portraits as well as the beauty of his drawings, while also experimenting with watercolour, oil painting, printmaking, and enamels. In Britain he enjoyed notoriety because of his exotic persona, and received commissions from royalty, aristocrats, grand tourists, and celebrities. Liotard: A Portrait of Eighteenth-Century Europe plots the career and practice and reputation of an extraordinary artist who deserves to be better known. This new study throws light on the wider cultural environment he navigated, illuminating connected themes, including fashion history, orientalism, and the promotion and display of portraits in the public and private spheres of Enlightenment Europe.
Christopher Baker is an art historian, curator, and author; he has been a Director at the National Galleries of Scotland and worked at Christ Church, Oxford, and the National Gallery in London. Christopher has also held Visiting Fellowships at Yale University and the British School in Rome and organised numerous highly successful exhibitions, chiefly on 18th- and 19th-century British and European art and the history of collecting.
The Burlington Magazine, November 2023
Charles Wild, Kensington Palace: The King’s Gallery, 1816, watercolour with touches of bodycolour over etched outlines, 20 × 25 cm c
(Royal Collection Trust, 922158)
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The eighteenth century in the November issue of The Burlington, which focuses on sculpture:
The Burlington Magazine 165 (November 2023)
e d i t o r i a l
• History of Art after Brexit, p. 1171.
It is probably fair to say that the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2020 as a consequence of the referendum of 2016 was not greeted with much enthusiasm by professional art historians. The subject as it has developed over the past century is by its very nature transnational in outlook.
a r t i c l e
• Jonathan Marsden, “George I’s Kensington Palace: The Sculptural Dimension,” pp. 1196–1205.
William Kent’s decoration of the new state rooms at Kensington Palace, London, for George I in 1722–27 has long been recognised as a pioneering exercise in neo-Palladianism. It was also an early example of the use of Classical sculpture in English interiors, a development in which Michael Rysbrack played a larger role than has formerly been recognised.
s h o r t e r n o t i c e
• Nicola Ciarlo, “Domenico Guidi in Padula: A Rediscovered Annunciation,” pp. 1206–09.
r e v i e w s
• Adriano Aymonino, “Albanimania,” pp. 1214–19.
A series of recent publications has turned the spotlight on Cardinal Alessandro Albani—described by Winckelmann as ‘the greatest patron in the world’—his villa in Rome, and collection of Classical antiquities, which have become newly accessible to scholars and the public after decades of seclusion.
• Heather Hyde Minor, Review of the exhibition catalogue, Victor Plahte Tschudi, Piranesi and the Modern Age (Nationalmuseum, Oslo / MIT Press, 2022), pp. 1239–41.
• Adam Bowett, Review of Ada De Wit, Grinling Gibbons and His Contemporaries (1650–1700): The Golden Age of Woodcarving in the Netherlands and Britain (Brepols, 2022), pp. 1247–49.
Archangel Gabriel, attributed by Nicola Ciarlo to Domenico Guidi, ca.1699–1701, marble, 94 × 81 × 39 cm, with socle (Padula: Charterhouse of S. Lorenzo).
• Marjorie Trusted, Review of Jan Zahle, Thorvaldsen: Collector of Plaster Casts from Antiquity and the Early Modern Period, 3 volumes (Thorvaldsens Museum and Aarhus University Press, 2020), pp. 1249–50.
• Natacha Coquery, Review of Iris Moon, Luxury after the Terror (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), pp. 1254–56.
• Joshua Mardell, Review of Jane Grenville, Pevsner’s Yorkshire, North Riding (Yale University Press, 2023), pp. 1256–57.
o b i t u a r y
• Paul Williamson, Obituary for Michael Kauffmann (1931–2023), pp. 1258–60.
Keeper of the Department of Prints & Drawings and Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum and subsequently Director of the Courtauld Institute of of Art, Michael Kauffmann was a scholar with a remarkable breadth of interest, as well as a widely respected and sensitive administrator and manager.
s u p p l e m e n t
• “Recent Acquisitions (2007–2023) of European Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London,” pp. 1261–68.
Seventeen years have passed since the publication of the last supplement in this Magazine describing the recent sculpture acquisitions made by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (V&A). The present supplement therefore highlights a selection of the most noteworthy works acquired in the intervening years.
Exhibition | The Regency in Paris, 1715–1723
Pierre Denis Martin, View of Paris from the Quai de la Rapée toward la Salpêtrière, l’île Saint-Louis, and l’île de la Cité, 1716, oil on canvas, 170 × 315 cm (Paris: Louvre / Musee Carnavalet)
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Now on view at the Musée Carnavalet:
The Régence in Paris, 1715–1723: The Dawn of the Enlightenment
Musée Carnavalet, Paris, 20 October 2023 — 25 February 2024
Curated by Valérie Guillaume, with José de Los Llanos and Ulysse Jardat
The Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris presents an exhibition on the Regency, a forgotten period in history, marking the return of the King and of political, economic, and cultural life to Paris.
Louis XIV died in Versailles on 1 September 1715, leaving behind a nation in debt and a five-year-old child too young to rule, Louis XV, as his heir. On 2 September, the Duke Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), nephew of the late King, took on the role of Regent of France. This exhibition takes place as part of the tricentennial commemoration of the Regent’s death.
In 1715, the court, the government, and all the administrations moved back to Paris, the second city in Europe, whose population then increased significantly. Thus, the city, and notably the Palais-Royal, the Regent’s residence, became the heart of all political life. A period of intense cultural effervescence ensued, giving rise to a world of philosophical, economic, and artistic innovations. Voltaire, Marivaux, Montesquieu, Law, and Watteau are some the most well-known figures of the time. With the invention of paper money and the bankruptcy of 1720, these years of economic and financial frenzy were interspersed with significant twists and turns. Under the Régence emerged a newfound freedom of criticism, which would become known as the spirit of the Enlightenment.
The exhibition’s thematic structure highlights the innovations of the period in order to illustrate the breadth of their historical significance. Over 200 works from public and private collections—paintings, sculptures, prints, items of decor, and pieces of furniture—help us explore this period of history, accounting for the mutations of society at a time when Paris was becoming the cultural capital of France in a permanent way.
Curators
• Valérie Guillaume, director of the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
• José de Los Llanos, head curator, in charge of the Graphic Arts Department and the Maquettes Department
• Ulysse Jardat, curator, head of the Decor, Furniture, and Decorative Arts Department
La Régence à Paris (1715–1723): L’aube des Lumières (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2023), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-2759605705, €39.
New Book | Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment
From Bloomsbury:
Stacey Sloboda, ed., Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment: A Cultural History (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2023), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1350408029, $120.
Interiors in the Age of Enlightenment provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary overview of the cultural history of interior design and interior spaces from 1700 to 1850. Considering the interior as material, social, and cultural artefact, this volume moves beyond conventional descriptive accounts of changing styles and interior design fashions, to explore in depth the effect on the interior of the materials, processes, aesthetic philosophies, and cultural attitudes of the age. From the Palace of Versailles to Virginia coffeehouses, and from chinoiserie bathhouses to the trading exchanges of the West Indies, the chapters in this book examine a wide range of themes including technological advancements, public spaces, gender and sexuality, and global movements in interior designs and decorations. Drawing together contributions from leading scholars, this volume provides the most authoritative and comprehensive survey of the history of interiors and interior architecture in the long eighteenth century.
Stacey Sloboda is Paul H. Tucker Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
c o n t e n t s
Preface
Introduction: The Interior in the Age of Enlightenment — Stacey Sloboda
1 Beauty: Cultural Aesthetics in the Enlightenment Interior — Anne Nellis Richter
2 Technology: Cultural Transfer, Imitation, and Improvement of Materials and Surfaces of the Interior — Noémie Étienne
3 Designers, Professions, Trades: Conceiving and Making the Interior — Conor Lucey
4 Global Movements: Exoticism and Hybridity in the Globalized Interior — Vanessa Alayrac-Fielding
5 Private Spaces: Performing the Home — Mimi Hellman
6 Public Spaces: Staging Ritual and Shaping Identity — Laurel O. Peterson
7 Gender and Sexuality: The Desire of Decor — Michael Yonan
8 The Interior in the Arts: Literary and Visual Representations — Karen Lipsedge and Melinda McCurdy
Bibliography
Index
New Book | A Cultural History of the Home
The 6 volumes appeared in 2020; the stand-alone volume on the Enlightenment became available in 2022 (see below); another option will appear in 2024.
Amanda Flather (anthology editor), A Cultural History of the Home, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), ISBN: 978-1472584410, $610.
A Cultural History of the Home provides a comprehensive survey of the domestic space from ancient times to the present. Spanning 2800 years, the six volumes explore how different cultures and societies have established, developed and used the home. It reveals a great deal about how people have lived day-to-day in a range of regions and epochs by providing a historical focus on the location in which they will have spent much of their time: the domestic space.
1 Antiquity, 800 BCE–800 CE
2 Medieval Age, 800–1450
3 Renaissance, 1450–1648
4 Age of Enlightenment, 1648–1815
5 Age of Empire, 1815–1920
6 Modern Age, 1920–Present
Each volume discusses the same themes in its chapters:
• The Meaning of the Home
• Family and Household
• The House
• Furniture and Furnishings
• Home and Work
• Gender and Home
• Hospitality and Home
• Religion and Home
This structure offers readers a broad overview of a period within each volume or the opportunity to follow a theme through history by reading the relevant chapter across volumes.
Amanda Flather is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Essex. She is the author of Gender and Space in Early Modern England (2006).
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Clive Edwards, ed., A Cultural History of the Home in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 264 pages, ISBN: 978-1472584250, $110. The paperback edition will be available in 2024.
During the period of the Enlightenment, the word ‘home’ could refer to a specific and defined physical living space, the location of domestic life, and a concept related to ideas of roots, origins, and retreat. The transformations that the Enlightenment encouraged created the circumstances for the concept of home to change and develop in the following three ways. First to influence homemaking were the literary and cultural manifestations that included issues around attitudes to education, social order and disorder, sensibility, and sexuality. Secondly, were the roles of visual and material culture of the home that demonstrated themselves through print, portraiture, literature, objects and products, and dress and fashion. Thirdly, were the industrial and sociological aspects that included concepts of luxury, progress, trade and technology, consumption, domesticity, and the notions of public and private spaces within a home. The chapters in this volume therefore discuss and reflect upon issues relating to the home through a range of approaches. Enlightenment homes are examined in terms of signification and meaning; the persons who inhabited them; the physical buildings and their furniture and furnishings; the work undertaken within them; the differing roles of men and women; the nature of hospitality, and the important role of religion in the home. Taken together they give a valuable overview of the manners, customs, and operation of the Enlightenment home.
Clive Edwards is Emeritus Professor of Design History at Loughborough University. He is editor of The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design (2015) and author of Turning Houses into Homes: A History of the Retailing and Consumption of Domestic Furnishings (2017), The Twentieth Century Interiors Sourcebook (2013), Interior Design: A Critical Introduction (2010), How to Read Pattern: A Crash Course in Textile Design (2009), Encyclopedia of Furnishing Textiles, Soft Furnishings and Floor Coverings (2007), British Furniture: 1600–2000 (2006), and Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades, and Techniques (2001).
c o n t e n t s
1 The Meaning of Home — Karen Lipsedge
2 Family and Household —Helen Metcalfe
3 The House — Stephen Hague
4 Furniture and Furnishings — Clive Edwards
5 Home and Work — Leonie Hannan
6 Gender and Home — Ruth Larsen
7 Hospitality and Home — Woodruff Smith
8 Religion and the Home — Matthew Neal
New Book | A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6
From Bloomsbury:
Christina Anderson (anthology editor), A Cultural History of Furniture, volumes 1–6 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 1824 pages, ISBN: 978-1472577894, $550.
Furniture is an artifact, so what can it tell us about culture? What social, religious, political, and economic factors have shaped its form and functions? How does furniture demonstrate the transformations in private and public life across time and cultures?
In a 6-volume work spanning 4,500 years, 70 experts chart the changing cultural framework within which furniture was designed, produced, and used in Western Europe. Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and, to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.
1 Antiquity, 2500 BCE–500 CE
2 Middle Ages and Renaissance, 500–1500
3 Age of Exploration, 1500–1700
4 Age of Enlightenment, 1700–1800
5 Age of Empire and Industry, 1800–1900
6 Modern Age, 1900–Present
Chapters address: Design and Motifs; Makers, Making, and Materials; Types and Uses; The Domestic Setting; The Public Setting; Exhibition and Display; Furniture and Architecture; Visual Representations; and Verbal Representations. The total extent of the pack is approximately 1,824 pages. Each volume opens with a series preface, an introduction, and notes on contributors; each concludes with notes, bibliography, and an index.
A Cultural History of Furniture is part of the Cultural Histories Series. Titles are available both as printed hardcover sets for libraries needing just one subject or preferring a one-off purchase and tangible reference for their shelves, or as part of a fully searchable digital library available to institutions by annual subscription or on perpetual access.
Christina M. Anderson is Research Fellow, History Faculty and Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.
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Sylvain Cordier, Christina Anderson, and Laura Houliston, eds., Volume 4: A Cultural History of Furniture in the Age of Enlightenment (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), ISBN: 9781472577856.
c o n t e n t s
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Series Preface
Introduction — M. B. Aldrich with Sylvain Cordier
1 Design and Motifs — Barbara Lasic
2 Makers, Making, and Materials — Yannick Chastang
3 Types and Uses — Mary-Eve Marchand
4 The Domestic Setting — Antonia Brodie
5 The Public Setting — Jeffrey Collins
6 Exhibition and Display — Frederic Dassas
7 Furniture and Architecture — Peter N. Lindfield
8 Visual Representations — Michael Decrossas and Sylvain Cordier
9 Verbal Representations — Tessa Murdoch
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