Enfilade

From Yale UP and the Royal Collection Trust:

Simon Thurley, Rufus Bird, and Michael Turner, St James’s Palace: From Leper Hospital to Royal Court (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023), 308 pages, ISBN: 978-0300267464, £60 / $75.

The first modern history of St James’s Palace, shedding light on a remarkable building at the heart of the history of the British monarchy that remains by far the least known of the royal residences

In this first modern history of St James’s Palace, the authors shed new light on a remarkable building that, despite serving as the official residence of the British monarchy from 1698 to 1837, is by far the least known of the royal residences. The book explores the role of the palace as home to the heir to the throne before 1714, its impact on the development of London and the West end during the late Stuart period, and how, following the fire at the palace of Whitehall, St James’s became the principal seat of the British monarchy in 1698. The arrangement and display of the paintings and furnishings making up the Royal Collection at St James’s is chronicled as the book follows the fortunes of the palace through the Victorian and Edwardian periods up to the present day. Specially commissioned maps, phased plans, and digital reconstructions of the palace at key moments in its development accompany a rich array of historical drawings, watercolors, photographs, and plans. The book includes a foreword by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales.

Simon Thurley is a leading historian of royal palaces and the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English court. Rufus Bird is a furniture specialist and former Surveyor of The Queen’s Works of Art, Royal Collection Trust. Michael Turner is an architectural historian and a former Inspector of Historic Buildings and Areas for Historic England.

C O N T E N T S

Foreword, HRH The Prince of Wales

Acknowledgments
Notes for the Readers

Simon Thurley, Introduction
1  Simon Thurley, From the Hospital of St James to the Civil War
2  Simon Thurley, The Restoration to Queen Anne
3  Rufus Bird, The Georgian Court
4  Michael Turner, George IV to the Second World War
5  Simon Thurley, The Palace Today

Notes
Abbreviations and Bibliography
Index
Illustration Credits
Plans A–D

From the London Topographical Society:

Frank Kelsall and Timothy Walker, Nicholas Barbon: Developing London, 1667–1698 (London: London Topographical Society, 2022), 240 pages, £35.

London grew rapidly in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and Nicholas Barbon (c.1640–1698) was central to its physical transformation. This first complete biography analyses how Barbon’s property development was closely connected to financial innovations. As a young doctor during the Plague year of 1665 Nicholas Barbon stayed in London to help victims, but thereafter his attention turned to building, to finance, and to economics. His first developments were in the City after the Great Fire. He then took advantage of the westward move of aristocratic houses to lay out streets in what had been their grounds, before building in the Temple, moving to sites in Soho and Westminster, eastwards beyond the City walls and north to Holborn. His development of Red Lion Fields (to the fury of neighbouring lawyers in Gray’s Inn) and Lamb’s Conduit Fields is discussed in detail, revealing the sophisticated—some might say ruthless—methods he used to raise funding. His speculative activity created rows of terrace houses and squares that became the norm for the city’s future development. At the same time he set up the first fire insurance company, the second bank, became an MP, and published on economic matters such as free trade and recoinage. He was in the parlance of the day a ‘projector’, and his story reveals a great deal about the way London, and Britain as a whole, was changing topographically, politically and socially in these crucial years.

From The British Art Journal, with the full long list available here:

Adriano Aymonino’s Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland is the winner of the 2022 William MB Berger Prize for British Art History.

The annual prize was created in 2001 to recognize excellence in the field of British art history by the Berger Collection Educational Trust and The British Art Journal in honor of the late American collector and patron William M. B. Berger (1925–1999), who amassed a serious collection of British paintings, which was gifted to the Denver Art Museum in 2019.

S H O R T  L I S T

• David Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 1120 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107215, £75.

• Adriano Aymonino, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107178, £50.

• Manolo Guerci, London’s ‘Golden Mile’: The Great Houses of the Strand, 1550–1650 (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2021), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107239, £50.

• Kenneth McConkey, Towards the Sun: The Artist-Traveller at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021), 260 pages, ISBN: 978-1913645083, £50.

• Cicely Robinson, ed, Henry Scott Tuke (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300265842, £20 / £30.

1 8 t h – C E N T U R Y  O F F E R I N G S  O N  T H E  L O N G  L I S T

• David Alexander, A Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Engravers, 1714–1820 (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2022), 1120 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107215, £75.

• Malcolm Andrews, A Sweet View: The Making of an English Idyll (London: Reaktion Books, 2022), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1789144987, £35.

• Adriano Aymonino, Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 400 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107178, £50.

• Rosemary Baird Andreae, Huguenots, Apothecaries, Gardeners and Squires: The Garniers of Rookesbury, Hampshire (Exeter: Short Run Press, 2021), 52 pages, ISBN: 978-0907473237, £10.

• Tristram Hunt, The Radical Potter: The Life and Times of Josiah Wedgwood (Metropolitan Books, 2021), 352 pages, ISBN: 978-1250128348, £25.

• François Marandet, with prefaces by Emmanuelle Delapierre and Robin Simon, Louis Chéron (1655–1725): L’ambition du dessin parfait (Ballan-Miré: Illustria Librairie des Musées, 2022), 288 pages, ISBN: ‎978-2354040956, 30€.

• Simon Martin, Drawn to Nature: Gilbert White and the Artists (Chichester: Pallant House Gallery, distributed by Yale University Press, 2022), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-1869827755, £25.

• Susan Sloman, Gainsborough in London (London: Modern Art Press, 2021), 412 pages, ISBN: 978-0956800787, £35.

• Cathryn Spence, Nature’s Favourite Child: Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden (Bradford-on-Avon: Stephen Morris, 2021), 312 pages, ISBN: 978-1838472634, £40.

• David Stacey, Art and Industry: Seven Artists in Search of an Industrial Revolution in Britain (London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2021), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1913491291, £25.

• Allen Staley, Copley and West in England, 1775–1815 (London: Burlington Press, 2021), 176 pages, ISBN: 978-1916237803, £35.

• Christina Strunck, Britain and the Continent, 1660–1727: Political Crisis and Conflict Resolution in Mural Paintings at Windsor, Chelsea, Chatsworth, Hampton Court and Greenwich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021), 528 pages, ISBN: 978-3110729610, £29.

• Adrian Tinniswood, Noble Ambitions: The Fall and Rise of the Post-War Country House (New York: Vintage Publishing, 2021), 416 pages, ISBN: 978-1787331785, £30.

• Joseph Viscomi, William Blake’s Printed Paintings: Methods, Origins, Meanings (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2021), 256 pages, ISBN: 978-1913107208, £40.

From Princeton UP:

Edward Cooke, Global Objects: Toward a Connected Art History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), 336 pages, ISBN: 978-0691184739, £28 / $35.

Art history is often viewed through cultural or national lenses that define some works as fine art while relegating others to the category of craft. Global Objects points the way to an interconnected history of art, examining a broad array of functional aesthetic objects that transcend geographic and temporal boundaries and challenging preconceived ideas about what is and is not art. Avoiding traditional binaries such as East versus West and fine art versus decorative art, Edward Cooke looks at the production, consumption, and circulation of objects made from clay, fiber, wood, and nonferrous base metals. Carefully considering the materials and process of making, and connecting process to product and people, he demonstrates how objects act on those who look at, use, and acquire them. He reveals how objects retain aspects of their local fabrication while absorbing additional meanings in subtle and unexpected ways as they move through space and time. In emphasizing multiple centers of art production amid constantly changing contexts, Cooke moves beyond regional histories driven by geography, nation-state, time period, or medium.

Beautifully illustrated, Global Objects traces the social lives of objects from creation to purchase, and from use to experienced meaning, charting exciting new directions in art history.

Edward S. Cooke, Jr. is the Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts at Yale University. His books include Inventing Boston: Design, Production, and Consumption, 1680–1720 and Making Furniture in Preindustrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut.

C O N T E N T S

Introduction

I. Making
1  Materials
2  Realization

II. Movement
3  Circulation and Interchange
4  Function

III.  Meaning
5  Memory and Gift
6  Appearance
7  Touch

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Glossary
Notes
Index
Photo Credits

Sarah Bartmann is part of the story as recounted by Radke; from Simon & Schuster:

Heather Radke, Butts: A Backstory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022), 320 pages, ISBN: 978-1982135485, $29.

Whether we love them or hate them, think they’re sexy, think they’re strange, consider them too big, too small, or anywhere in between, humans have a complicated relationship with butts. It is a body part unique to humans, critical to our evolution and survival, and yet it has come to signify so much more: sex, desire, comedy, shame. A woman’s butt, in particular, is forever being assessed, criticized, and objectified, from anxious self-examinations trying on jeans in department store dressing rooms to enduring crass remarks while walking down a street or high school hallways. But why? In Butts: A Backstory, reporter, essayist, and RadioLab contributing editor Heather Radke is determined to find out.

Spanning nearly two centuries, this “whip-smart” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) cultural history takes us from the performance halls of 19th-century London to the aerobics studios of the 1980s, the music video set of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” and the mountains of Arizona, where every year humans and horses race in a feat of gluteal endurance. Along the way, she meets evolutionary biologists who study how butts first developed; models whose measurements have defined jean sizing for millions of women; and the fitness gurus who created fads like “Buns of Steel.” She also examines the central importance of race through figures like Sarah Bartmann, once known as the “Venus Hottentot,” Josephine Baker, Jennifer Lopez, and other women of color whose butts have been idolized, envied, and despised. Part deep dive reportage, part personal journey, part cabinet of curiosities, Butts is an entertaining, illuminating, and thoughtful examination of why certain silhouettes come in and out of fashion—and how larger ideas about race, control, liberation, and power affect our most private feelings about ourselves and others.

Heather Radke is an essayist, journalist, and contributing editor and reporter at Radiolab, the Peabody Award­–winning program from WNYC. She has written for publications including The Believer, Longreads, and The Paris Review, and she teaches at Columbia University’s creative writing MFA Program. Before becoming a writer, Heather worked as a curator at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in Chicago.

◊   ◊   ◊   ◊   ◊

In her piece for The New York Times (28 November 2022), Marisa Meltzer narrates a visit to The Met with Radke to discuss the variety of bottoms—and attitudes toward them—across the history of art.

From the University of Hertfordshire Press:

Malcolm Thick, William Ellis: Eighteenth-Century Farmer, Journalist, and Entrepreneur (Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire Press, 2022), 224 pages, ISBN: 978-1912260492, £17 / $34.

William Ellis, who lived and farmed at Little Gaddesden in Hertfordshire in the first half of the eighteenth century (d. 1759), is an important figure in English agricultural history. In his time the most prolific writer on agriculture in England, he authored many works that were read not only at home but also in the American colonies and continental Europe. Ellis was essentially an agricultural journalist, then a relatively new occupation. He wrote about his own life as well as those of the ordinary people of Little Gaddesden and further afield—he travelled extensively throughout the southern half of England. Most of his copy was derived from conversations he had had with farmers, their wives, and other rural folk, the sheer immediacy of his books outshining those of his rivals.

Ellis’s style was discursive, particularly so in The Country Housewife’s Family Companion (1750). As well as providing a compendium of household management, cookery, and medicine, Ellis delighted in relaying gossip. He included the activities of farmers, wives and maids, labourers, travellers, and beggars, as well as the gentry and aristocracy, rich pickings for social historians.

Ellis also used his books to advertise his business as a supplier of agricultural instruments, seeds, plants, trees, and fowls—an innovative approach. The Swedish botanist Pehr Kalm visited Little Gaddesden in 1748 to inspect Ellis’s farming and the various farm implements he advertised for sale. The two men didn’t warm to each other, but Kalm’s independent observations add to what we know about Ellis.

Piecing together the scant facts about Ellis’s early life, Malcolm Thick has uncovered new information on his time before he commenced farming and unravelled some of the complexities of his two marriages. The book’s central focus is on Ellis’s agricultural writings, which provide a fascinating picture of rural life in the period and shed light on the evolution of English farming. This is the first book about Ellis for over sixty years and the first to consider him fully in the round—as a farmer, an active member of his community, an innovative salesman, and a wonderfully curious mind.

Malcolm Thick is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a winner of the Sophie Coe prize for food history writing. He has published books and papers on early modern gardening, food, and agriculture, including a critically acclaimed biography of the early scientist Sir Hugh Plat and a history of market gardening around London. He also wrote the introduction to a new edition of Ellis’s Country Housewife’s Family Companion and has contributed a chapter on “Plants as Staple Foods” in volume 3 of A Cultural History of Plants (Bloomsbury, 2022).

C O N T E N T S

1  Introduction
2  Life before Little Gaddesden and at Church Farm
3  Agriculture
4  Advertising and Trading
5  Food, Drink, and Medicine
6  Ellis the Man
7  Other Matters
8  Conclusion

From Fonthill Media:

Iain Gordon Brown, Auld Greekie: Edinburgh as the Athens of the North (Fonthill Media, 2022), 368 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1781558928, £30.

Around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and especially in the years between about 1810 and 1840, Edinburgh—long and affectionately known as ‘Auld Reekie’—came to think of itself and to be widely regarded as something else. The city became ‘Modern Athens’, an epithet later turned to ‘the Athens of the North’. The latter phrase is very well-known. It is also much used by those who have little understanding of the often confused and contradictory messages hidden within the apparent convenience of a trite or hackneyed term that actually conceals a myriad of nuanced meanings.

This book examines the circumstances underlying a remarkable change in perception of a place and an age. It looks in detail at the ‘when’, the ‘by whom’, the ‘why’, the ‘how’ and the ‘with what consequences’ (for good or ill) of this most interesting, and extremely complex, transformation of one city into an image—whether physical or spiritual, or both—of another. A very broad range of evidence is drawn upon, the story having not only topographical, artistic and architectural dimensions, but also social, cerebral and philosophical ones. Edinburgh may well have been considered, for one reason or another, as ‘Athenian’. But, in essence, it remained what it had always been. Maybe, however, for a brief period it was really a sort of hybrid city: ‘Auld Greekie’.

Iain Gordon Brown FSA FRSE, whose academic career began as a student of ancient history and classical archaeology, was principal curator of manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland, where he is now honorary fellow. He has held the office of curator of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy, and has also been president of the Old Edinburgh Club and a trustee of Edinburgh World Heritage. He is consultant to the Adam Drawings Project at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.