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Titre:
A lust for window sills: a lover's guide to British buildings from portcullis to pebble-dash

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$34.99
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Résumé:
Ever wondered why the floors in our terraced houses are different heights? Or what the landscape round where you live looked like before it was built on? And did you know you can date a building by its window sills? This publication tells us why and how. Harry Mount takes us on an engrossing tour of Britain's architecture, exploring the quirks, foibles and tiny details that make our buildings unique, and revealing the fascinating stories and anecdotes behind them along the way.

Titre:
Behind closed doors

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$31.95
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Résumé:
Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.

Titre:
Behind closed doors: at home in Georgian England

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$49.95
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Résumé:
Amanda Vickery unlocks the homes of Georgian England to examine the lives of the people who lived there. Vickery makes ingenious use of upholsterer’s ledgers, burglary trials, and other unusual sources to reveal the roles of house and home in economic survival, social success, and political representation during the long eighteenth century. Through the spread of formal visiting, the proliferation of affordable ornamental furnishings, the commercial celebration of feminine artistry at home, and the currency of the language of taste, even modest homes turned into arenas of social campaign and exhibition.

Titre:
The town house in Georgian London

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$72.95
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Résumé:
Stepping away from conventional analyses of materials or style and into the previously unexplored world of the house owner, this book takes a fresh look at both the social, as well as the architectural, importance of the 18th-century London town house. Drawing on rich and entertaining evidence—both documentary and anecdotal—Rachel Stewart explores why, and how, so many people pursued life in the city. She not only discusses some of the major architects of the day and their most famous buildings, but she also uncovers what occupants of town houses thought about their property; why and how they chose or built their houses; how they paid for them, used them, decorated them, and disposed of them; and what uses it had for them beyond simple accommodation.

Titre:
Public Architecture in Ireland 1680-1760

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$119.95
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This book examines the public architecture of Ireland from 1680 to 1760, a crucial period during which the country undertook the combined tasks of recovering from war and constructing a new and stable society. New buildings, and new types of buildings, were needed to express and sustain this society. Architectural historian Edward McParland explores the role of public architecture in this enterprise, focusing on public buildings as works of architecture and art, while also discussing the political, social, and economic contexts in which they were built. The book opens with a discussion of the people who were involved in the creation of public architecture and a description of the physical appearance of Ireland at the time, including its roads and harbors, its market houses and churches. The author then presents detailed portraits of key public buildings, among them The Royal Hospital Kilmainham, The Royal Barracks, Dublin Castle, Trinity College Dublin, and Edward Lovett Pearce’s Parliament House. Drawing on extensive research in archives throughout Britain and Ireland, McParland documents the architectural and social importance of these remarkable public buildings.

Titre:
The English folly: the edifice complex

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$60.50
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Résumé:
If this were a novel, the tales of astounding wealth, sexual perversion, murder, munificence, rape, insanity, brutality, slavery, religious mania, selfishness, snobbery, charity, suicide, generosity, theft, madness, wickedness, failure and eccentricity which unfold in these pages would be too concentrated to allow for the willing suspension of disbelief. All these sins and virtues, and more, are displayed by the characters in this book, some exhibiting several of them simultaneously. Folly builders were not as we are. They never built what we now call follies. They built for beauty, utility, improvement; it is only we, struggling after them with our imperfect understanding, who dismiss their prodigious constructions as follies. Follies can be found around the world, but England is their spiritual home. Having written the definitive books on follies in Great Britain, Benelux and the USA, Headley & Meulenkamp have turned their attention to the folly builders themselves, people so blinded by fashion or driven by some nameless ideology that they expended great fortunes on making their point in brick, stone and flint. Most follies are simply misunderstood buildings, and this book studies the motives, characters, decisions and delusions of their builders. If there was madness in their building, fortunately there was no method in it.

Titre:
Shaping London: The patterns and forms that make the metropolis

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$90.00
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Résumé:
In this view of London, Farrell looks beyond the contribution of individual buildings to the city. He creates a larger, more exciting frame, charting how the capital’s messy and complex shape has been hewn out of a series of layers – natural and manmade, so the Thames and the natural landscape gets as much attention as the railway infrastructure, the roads and the canals. This provides a whole series of revelations that allow us to see the city afresh: How might the natural bends in the river have impacted where and what was built? How have the Thames’ tributaries affected historic boundaries and development, played out in the estates of Mayfair? How is the Roman plan for the city of London still discernible in today’s street patterns? Illustrated with original sketches, maps, archive photographs and paintings, this book provides a collage of London’s patterns and its history.

Titre:
Rice's architectural primer

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$32.00
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A beautifully packaged, idiosyncratic introduction to British building styles, by the acclaimed illustrator and architectural enthusiast Matthew Rice. Covering the grammar and vocabulary of British buildings and the evolution of styles from Norman castles to Norman Foster, the aim is to enable the reader to recognise, understand and date any British building. As Matthew Rice says, ‘Once you can speak any language, conversation can begin, but without it communications can only be brief and brutish. The same is the case with Architecture: an inability to describe the component parts of a building leaves one tongue-tied and unable to begin to discuss what is or is not exciting, dull or peculiar about it.’ With this book in your hand, pocket or car, buildings will break down beguilingly into their component parts, ready for inspection and discussion. There will be no more references to that curly bit on top of the thing with the square protrusions. Ungainly and inept descriptions will be a thing of the past and, fluent in the world of volutes, hood moulds, lobed architraves and bucrania, you will be able to leave a cathedral or country house with as much to talk about as a film or play.

Titre:
Rice's church primer

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$27.00
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Résumé:
Rice's Church Primer explains the language of architecture in churches, from the restrained Norman style of William the Conqueror to the gilded excesses of the Baroque. The primer begins with an explanation of the basic 'Grammar' of churches: elevation, plan, fronts, vaults and towers. This allows the reader to easily understand what follows. Next comes the 'Vocabulary' of styles in chronological order, from ancient Saxon churches to modern cathedrals. Each period covers component parts like doors, windows, towers, pews, panelling and pulpits. Finally, there is a map pinpointing some of the best churches around the country.

Titre:
Household gods; the British and their possessions

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$28.95
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Résumé:
At what point did the British develop their mania for interiors, wallpaper, furniture, and decoration? Why have the middle classes developed so passionate an attachment to the contents of their homes? This book offers surprising answers to these questions, uncovering the roots of today's consumer society and investigating the forces that shape consumer desires. Exploring a wealth of unusual records and archives, Deborah Cohen locates the source of modern consumerism and materialism in early nineteenth-century religious fervor. Over the course of the Victorian era, consumerism shed the taint of sin to become the pre-eminent means of expressing individuality. The book ranges from musty antique shops to luxurious emporia, from suburban semi-detached houses to elegant city villas, from husbands fretting about mantelpieces to women appropriating home decoration as a feminist cause. It uncovers a society of consumers whose identities have become entwined with the things they put in their houses.