Enfilade

From Giles, in association with the Maryland Center for History and Culture, Baltimore:

Carl Lounsbury, ed., The Material World of Eyre Hall: Four Centuries of Chesapeake History (London: Giles, 2021), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-1911282914, £75 / $90.

With an Introduction by Cary Carson, and contributions by Laura Pass Barry, Bennie Brown, Edward A. Chappell, Sam Florer, Erik Goldstein, Haley Hoffman, Neal T. Hurst, Angelika R. Kuettner, Mark B. Letzer, Carl R. Lounsbury, George W. McDaniel, Katie McKinney, Elizabeth Palms, Margaret Pritchard, Sumpter Priddy, Will Rieley, Alexandra Rosenberg, Gary Stanton, Robert Watkins, and John Watson

A microhistory of 400 years of southern USA history told in the study of one place, Eyre Hall on the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.

Erected in 1759 on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, Eyre Hall is still occupied by descendants of its builder. It retains a rich variety of objects from furniture and books to silver and paintings acquired by the family, reflecting the tastes and aspirations of its many different generations. Only a small handful of places in Virginia can claim such continuity. The material culture of Eyre Hall illustrates the ever-changing meanings of this place in American culture from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. It represents the cultural endeavours of Southern society built on slavery and impacted by the tribulations of wars, emancipation, and economic depressions. This study explores the mutability of this inheritance in the wake of such transformative events. The book is divided into four sections. The first recounts the history of those who lived at Eyre Hall. The second examines the architecture of the house and its service buildings. The third explores the formal garden. The fourth section is a catalogue raisonné of its objects.

Carl R. Lounsbury was Senior Architectural Historian at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (now retired) and Adjunct Associate Professor of History at the College of William and Mary. Cary Carson was Senior Vice President of Research at Colonial Williamsburg (now retired).

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments
Foreword by J. Thomas Savage

Eyreloom: An Introduction by Cary Carson

I. The Changing Fortunes of the Eyre Family through Four Centuries
Golden Quarter by Carl Lounsbury
Eyreville: Archaeology of the Late Seventeenth Century by Haley Hoffman
Eyre Hall: Power House by Carl Lounsbury
Working the Land by Sam Florer
The Bounty of Eyre Hall: From Working Plantation to Summer Retreat in the Long Nineteenth Century by Carl Lounsbury
Escaping Enslavement by Whaleboat, 1832 by Alexandra Rosenberg
Health Retreats and Pleasure Grounds by Robert Watkins
Hoofprints by Elizabeth Palms
Eyre Hall in the Twentieth Century: ‘I’m Home’ by George McDaniel
A Scrapbook of Recollections by Those Who Called Eyre Hall ‘Home’ by George McDanielII

II. Architecture
The Architecture of the House by Carl Lounsbury
Architectural Hardware by Edward Chappell
Wallpaper by Margaret Pritchard
Domestic Service Buildings by Carl Lounsbury
Home Farm: Overseer’s House by Carl Lounsbury

III. Landscape
Garden and Grounds by Will Rieley
Green-house by Will Rieley
Graveyard by Carl Lounsbury

IV. Catalogue
Furniture by Sumpter Priddy
Silver by Mark Letzer
Ceramics by Robert Hunter and Angelika Kuettner
Glass by Angelika Kuettner
Paintings by Laura Pass Barry
Maps by Katie McKinney
Prints by Katie McKinney
Books by Bennie Brown
Musical Instruments by John Watson
Sheet Music by Gary Stanton
Costume and Textiles by Neal Hurst
Ironwork and Arms by Erik Goldstein

Index
Photo Credits

From Penguin Random House:

Sofi Thanhauser, Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (New York: Pantheon, 2022), 400 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1524748395, $30.

In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from, illuminating our world in unexpected ways. She takes us from the opulent court of Louis XIV to the labor camps in modern-day Chinese-occupied Xinjiang. We see how textiles were once dyed with lichen, shells, bark, saffron, and beetles, displaying distinctive regional weaves and knits, and how the modern Western garment industry has refashioned our attire into the homogenous and disposable uniforms popularized by fast-fashion brands.

Thanhauser makes clear how the clothing industry has become one of the planet’s worst polluters and how it relies on chronically underpaid and exploited laborers. But she also shows us how micro-communities, textile companies, and clothing makers in every corner of the world are rediscovering ancestral and ethical methods for making what we wear. Drawn from years of intensive research and reporting from around the world, and brimming with fascinating stories, Worn reveals to us that our clothing comes not just from the countries listed on the tags or ready-made from our factories. It comes, as well, from deep in our histories.

Sofi Thanhauser teaches in the writing department at Pratt Institute. She has received fellowships from the Fulbright Program, MacDowell, and Ucross Foundation. Her writing has appeared in Vox, Essay Daily, and The Establishment, among other publications.

C O N T E N T S

Introduction

Linen
1  The Last Linen Shirt in New Hampshire
2  Underthings

Cotton
3  Texas Fields
4  The Fabric Revolution
5  Drought

Silk
6  Yangtze Silk
7  Costume Drama
8  The Rise of Mass Fashion

Synthetics
9  Rayon
10  Nylons
11  Export Processing Zones

Wool
12  Army of the Small
13  Woolfest
14  Weavers

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Liverpool UP:

David Jacques, Chiswick House Gardens: 300 Years of Creation and Re-creation (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022), 248 pages, ISBN: 978-1800856219, £40.

The grounds at Chiswick House are amongst the most iconic of all the historic gardens of Europe. In the 1720s they reflected Lord Burlington’s innovative ideas on Palladianism and antique gardens, whilst the area transformed by William Kent to give a rustic appearance in the early 1730s has been recognised as one of, or perhaps the, birthplace of the landscape garden. The grounds were periodically brought to the forefront of taste, reaching another high point as the venue for spectacular garden parties under the 6th Duke of Devonshire. As a garden of many periods it has given rise to passionate national debates since World War II on the principles of restoration, and as a public park it has been an important project assisted by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Its renewed high state of keeping and its tranquil beauty belies its ‘deep’ history of intellectual debate, social tensions and practical difficulties.

The book concentrates on the four main periods when Chiswick gardens were in the national spotlight, two when being in the forefront of taste and two concerning the restorations, the first being in the 1950s when the whole question of garden restoration was entirely new. The second restoration, on and off since 1988 intersects with the development of a philosophical stance and national policy on the restoration of parks and gardens. There is much of interest for art and architectural historians, garden historians, social historians and those local and international visitors who enjoy the finest public park in West London.

David Jacques is an independent scholar and part-time lecturer at the Institute for Historical Research.

C O N T E N T S

Foreword
Acknowledgements
Image Credits
About the Book
Abbreviations

1  ‘His Lordship’s Fine Genius’
2  ‘A Picture of Watteau’
3  English Palladianism
4  The Public Park Initiative

Appendix A: The Owners of Chiswick House Gardens
Appendix B: The Head Gardeners at Chiswick House
Appendix C: Chronology

Notes
Bibliography
Index

From Penn State UP:

Sarah Betzer, Animating the Antique: Sculptural Encounter in the Age of Aesthetic Theory (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0271088839, $125.

Framed by tensions between figural sculpture experienced in the round and its translation into two-dimensional representations, Animating the Antique explores enthralling episodes in a history of artistic and aesthetic encounters. Moving across varied locations—among them Rome, Florence, Naples, London, Dresden, and Paris—Sarah Betzer explores a history that has yet to be written: that of the Janus-faced nature of interactions with the antique by which sculptures and beholders alike were caught between the promise of animation and the threat of mortification.

Examining the traces of affective and transformative sculptural encounters, the book takes off from the decades marked by the archaeological, art-historical, and art-philosophical developments of the mid-eighteenth century and culminates in fin de siècle anthropological, psychological, and empathic frameworks. It turns on two fundamental and interconnected arguments: that an eighteenth-century ontology of ancient sculpture continued to inform encounters with the antique well into the nineteenth century, and that by attending to the enduring power of this model, we can newly appreciate the distinctively modern terms of antique sculpture’s allure. As Betzer shows, these eighteenth-century developments had far-reaching ramifications for the making and beholding of modern art, the articulations of art theory, the writing of art history, and a significantly queer Nachleben of the antique.

Bold and wide-ranging, Animating the Antique sheds light upon the work of myriad artists, in addition to that of writers ranging from Goethe and Winckelmann to Hegel, Walter Pater, and Vernon Lee. It will be especially welcomed by scholars and students working in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art history, art writing, and art historiography.

Sarah Betzer is Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia and the author of Ingres and the Studio: Women, Painting, History, also published by Penn State University Press.