Gareth Hughes
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MdB said:
Someone seems to have had a pre-Christmas copy already
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...spires-of-Kings-College-Chapel-Cambridge.html
- Thread starter Nigel Watts
- Start date
Someone seems to have had a pre-Christmas copy already
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/new...spires-of-Kings-College-Chapel-Cambridge.html
essexbearhunter
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I would like to commend a group of books from the early 1900's as reference works.
The expense of including photographs meant that many include excellent scaled line drawings of architectural details. The use of larger book formats such as Elephant Folio (near the modern A3 size), makes illustrations much more usable as patterns than some modern works.
Tunstall Small & Christopher Woodbridge produced an unusually useful series of works including
Mouldings of the Wren & Georgian Periods (a portfolio of 20 sheets of full size sections dealing with everything from cornices & panel mouldings to glazing bars) is a companion to their book Houses of the Wren and Early Georgian Period which has standard measured drawings and photographs of 10 buildings.
They produced several similar portfolios: English Brickwork 1470-1750 ; Architectural Turned Woodwork of the 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries; English Wrought Ironwork Medieval & Early Renaissance and Mouldings of the Tudor Period which would provide clear templates if you need to recreate features.
The strength of Henry Avray Tipping lies in the enormous number of photographs within his works and the way that he lays out the intent and background to pieces and places. His English Homes series (published 1920) gives visual access to several properties still in domestic usage just before the abyss (the Earl of Craven had pulled down Combe Abbey before the volume was reprinted in 1929). Whilst the scale of the houses covered is well beyond most of us here, the same aspirations drove the builders of smaller houses when they chose to be 'fashionable'
The expense of including photographs meant that many include excellent scaled line drawings of architectural details. The use of larger book formats such as Elephant Folio (near the modern A3 size), makes illustrations much more usable as patterns than some modern works.
Tunstall Small & Christopher Woodbridge produced an unusually useful series of works including
Mouldings of the Wren & Georgian Periods (a portfolio of 20 sheets of full size sections dealing with everything from cornices & panel mouldings to glazing bars) is a companion to their book Houses of the Wren and Early Georgian Period which has standard measured drawings and photographs of 10 buildings.
They produced several similar portfolios: English Brickwork 1470-1750 ; Architectural Turned Woodwork of the 16th, 17th & 18th Centuries; English Wrought Ironwork Medieval & Early Renaissance and Mouldings of the Tudor Period which would provide clear templates if you need to recreate features.
The strength of Henry Avray Tipping lies in the enormous number of photographs within his works and the way that he lays out the intent and background to pieces and places. His English Homes series (published 1920) gives visual access to several properties still in domestic usage just before the abyss (the Earl of Craven had pulled down Combe Abbey before the volume was reprinted in 1929). Whilst the scale of the houses covered is well beyond most of us here, the same aspirations drove the builders of smaller houses when they chose to be 'fashionable'
Gareth Hughes
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I've just seen a review of "Lost London" by Philip Davies that has led me to put it on next year's Christmas present list.
Flyfisher
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Thanks to some earlier recommendations, Santa managed to struggle down our chimney with copies of:
Oak-Framed Buildings, Rupert Newman
Building Norfolk, Matthew Rice
The Well-Worn Interior, Forster & Whittaker
Having flicked through them all, I've settled on Oak-Framed Buildings as the first one to be fully digested. The only problem, so far, is that wine and a roaring fire have both conspired against keeping me awake long enough in the evenings to make much progress and I tend to wake up at around 4am on the sofa with neck-ache. I'll just have to persevere.
Oak-Framed Buildings, Rupert Newman
Building Norfolk, Matthew Rice
The Well-Worn Interior, Forster & Whittaker
Having flicked through them all, I've settled on Oak-Framed Buildings as the first one to be fully digested. The only problem, so far, is that wine and a roaring fire have both conspired against keeping me awake long enough in the evenings to make much progress and I tend to wake up at around 4am on the sofa with neck-ache. I'll just have to persevere.
essexbearhunter
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Damn! I knew that I had missed something off my wish-list !
but Santa did bring me:
Compass and Rule by Gerbino & Johnston
The English Country House by Mary Miers
Grinling Gibbons and the Woodwork of his Age by H Avray Tipping
Country Houses of the Cotswolds by Nicholas Mander
At the moment it is a toss-up between Miers & Tipping as to which gets read first. (I want something slightly less condensed than my last read: Walter Ison's 'The Georgian Buildings of Bath'...which cries out to have its pictures and text merged into a DVD so that you can see the buildings as he describes them. )
JoceAndChris
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Oh, oh, oh, I'm overcome with excitement at "Paper magic" by Jane Gordon Clark. If anyone else has an interest in historic schemes for interior decorating, this book is a must-have!
Masses on Print Rooms, on Chinoiserie, on panels, on borders, on Trompe l'Oeil, on use of colour and contrast - the rooms photographed are enviably lovely and the techniques explored are backed up with what appears to be well researched historical evidence. There is so much to copy I'll need a new house.
Masses on Print Rooms, on Chinoiserie, on panels, on borders, on Trompe l'Oeil, on use of colour and contrast - the rooms photographed are enviably lovely and the techniques explored are backed up with what appears to be well researched historical evidence. There is so much to copy I'll need a new house.
Penners
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But nothing whatsoever on how to fit an extractor fan?JoceAndChris said:
Pah! What's the point of that, then?
JoceAndChris
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Penners said:
But my dear, that is why you are here. :wink:
Flyfisher
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4 billion years of evolution . . . just to fit an extractor fan. :lol:
Carol
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Stephen said:
Would also recommend Traditional Houses of Somerset by Jane Penoyre. Lots of architectural drawings and explanation of the domestic and agricultural buildings in the county.
And a tiny bit biased as our place gets a mention!
JoceAndChris
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Other books I've enjoyed this year have been:
"Baroque Baroque; The Culture of Excess", Stephen Calloway ( thanks Gareth - and this might be one Nigel would enjoy, with its focus on gorgeous interiors?)
"Pillar to Post" and "Homes Sweet Homes", Osbert Lancaster, for a wry, aesthetic look at exteriors and interiors.
"The Victorians", Jeremy Paxman - this is all on paintings, but it's fascinating.
"Rice's Architectural Primer", see Penners' comment on Page 1 of this thread on Rice.
"Follies and Pleasure Pavillions", George Mott
"Rural Residences", Papworth
"The Last of Uptake" - a really lovely story describing Stourhead type property and its demise, beautiful Rex Whistler pics
"Dr Johnson's London", Lisa Picard
And to be really frivolous, I think a subscription to "The English Home" would be a nice pressie.
"Baroque Baroque; The Culture of Excess", Stephen Calloway ( thanks Gareth - and this might be one Nigel would enjoy, with its focus on gorgeous interiors?)
"Pillar to Post" and "Homes Sweet Homes", Osbert Lancaster, for a wry, aesthetic look at exteriors and interiors.
"The Victorians", Jeremy Paxman - this is all on paintings, but it's fascinating.
"Rice's Architectural Primer", see Penners' comment on Page 1 of this thread on Rice.
"Follies and Pleasure Pavillions", George Mott
"Rural Residences", Papworth
"The Last of Uptake" - a really lovely story describing Stourhead type property and its demise, beautiful Rex Whistler pics
"Dr Johnson's London", Lisa Picard
And to be really frivolous, I think a subscription to "The English Home" would be a nice pressie.
downshifter
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Hi
A wonderful book for an insight into how buildings work is "Structures; or why things dont fall down" by JE Gordon. Techie in places but ever so readable as it includes examples from ships to sausages. eg. "the circumferencial stress in the wall of a cylindrical pressure vessel is twice the longitudinal stress... One consequence of this must have been observed by everyone who has ever fried a sausage. When the filling inside the sausage swells and the skin bursts, the slit is almost always longitudinal." (p.121)
You may look differently on trees, as well as sausages, after reading this book. How do trees manage to sway without breaking in strong winds?
"the tree manages to grow in such a way that the outer wood is normally in tension (to the extent of something over 2000 psi or 14 MN/m2), while the middle of the tree, by way of compensation, is in compression." (p.282)
great stuff
A wonderful book for an insight into how buildings work is "Structures; or why things dont fall down" by JE Gordon. Techie in places but ever so readable as it includes examples from ships to sausages. eg. "the circumferencial stress in the wall of a cylindrical pressure vessel is twice the longitudinal stress... One consequence of this must have been observed by everyone who has ever fried a sausage. When the filling inside the sausage swells and the skin bursts, the slit is almost always longitudinal." (p.121)
You may look differently on trees, as well as sausages, after reading this book. How do trees manage to sway without breaking in strong winds?
"the tree manages to grow in such a way that the outer wood is normally in tension (to the extent of something over 2000 psi or 14 MN/m2), while the middle of the tree, by way of compensation, is in compression." (p.282)
great stuff
Penners
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Some people do seem to have a lot of time on their hands, don't they? :wink:downshifter said:
Surely all that matters is that the sausage does burst, so that the meat which pushes out of the skin can get all lovely and crispy.
Gareth Hughes
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Juju said:
Bookfinder (www.bookfinder.com) searches through the other online booksellers for you, including ABE.
"How Buildings Learn- what happens after they are built", by Stewart Brandt, though American, is also highly recommended.
JoceAndChris
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Hmm, the above looks like a proper boys' book!
Too late for this Christmas as a pressie probably, but I had a very cosy day by the fire yesterday reading "Castles in the Air", by Judy Corbett, and heartily recommend it has a place on every PPUKer's reading list. It's about how the author, from really very ordinary beginnings, saved this castle - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwydir_Castle?wasRedirected=true, and much of her struggle, despair and triumph echoes what us lot get up to on this forum, although the scale is perhaps more daunting (I say perhaps because she is able to raise revenue from the public and from CADW, unlike us) But I read it with happy tears pouring down my cheeks - especially the bit where after a lot of detective work she finds that the missing dining room, an orgy of carved oak, went to William Randolph Hearst's collection in the twenties, and was later bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then she gets it back.
I hadn't heard the story though it was in all the papers at the time (1996), and now I'm so looking forward to seeing Gwydir - has anyone visited?
It's a great read, complete with ghosts.
Too late for this Christmas as a pressie probably, but I had a very cosy day by the fire yesterday reading "Castles in the Air", by Judy Corbett, and heartily recommend it has a place on every PPUKer's reading list. It's about how the author, from really very ordinary beginnings, saved this castle - http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwydir_Castle?wasRedirected=true, and much of her struggle, despair and triumph echoes what us lot get up to on this forum, although the scale is perhaps more daunting (I say perhaps because she is able to raise revenue from the public and from CADW, unlike us) But I read it with happy tears pouring down my cheeks - especially the bit where after a lot of detective work she finds that the missing dining room, an orgy of carved oak, went to William Randolph Hearst's collection in the twenties, and was later bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and then she gets it back.
I hadn't heard the story though it was in all the papers at the time (1996), and now I'm so looking forward to seeing Gwydir - has anyone visited?
It's a great read, complete with ghosts.
Penners
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Shucks - that rules me out. It's been a very long time since I was proper, or a boy.JoceAndChris said: