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Titre:
Visions of ruin : architectural fantasies & designs for garden follies

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$29.50
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Résumé:
This exhibition catalogue explores 'the cult of the ruin', a phenomenon of 18th and early 19th century Europe. Mock ruins were built as 'follies' in landscape gardens, while artists imagined how London would appear as a ruined city after the collapse of the British Empire. In Rome, interiors were painted as trompe l'oeil ruins, and in Paris the great chef Antoine Carême served blancmanges in the shape of Roman ruins. John Soane represents the climax of this fascination. In the garden of his Museum at No.13 Lincoln's Inn Fields is the 'Monk's Yard', a mock-ruin assembled from medieval fragments of the Palace of Westminster. At his country house, Pitzhanger Manor in Ealing, he pretended that a mock-classical ruin was a Roman temple he had discovered at the bottom of the garden. He commemorated the completion of his masterpiece, the Bank of England, by exhibiting a series of astonishing views of the structure as if a ruin. He even wrote a narrative, "Crude Hints Towards the History of My House", in which he imagined an archaeologist of future centuries inspecting the fragments of his home. The transcribed text is reprinted in this publication. Architects and artists include Robert Adam, William Chambers, Hubert Robert, Piranesi, Clerrisseau, Richard Wilson, J. M. W. Turner, Gustave Doré and John Martin.

Titre:
Death and memory: Soane and the architecture of legacy

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$33.95
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Résumé:
This book of essays is published to coincide with an exhibition of the same title at Sir John Soane's Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London (October 23, 2015–March 26, 2016) commemorating the 200th anniversary of Soane's beloved wife Eliza's death on November 22, 1815. Its relevance to Soane studies, is, however, much broader, with essays shedding new light on the architecture of legacy in Sir John Soane's Museum; Soane's preoccupation with memorialization as revealed in the design process for the Soane family tomb; the legacy of his drawings collection; and Soane's attempt shortly before his death to sustain future interest in his collections by creating a series of time capsules. The essays, written by the curatorial team at Sir John Soane's Museum, are accompanied by 39 illustrations in full color, some of them published for the first time.