a-l-ancien-regime:
The Stone Hall, Houghton Hall, Norfolk
Architects: Colin Campbell and James Gibbs (1721-1731)
Photograph: A. E. Henson (1920)
Houghton Hall (1721-31) is one of the most important houses of its time. It is also one of the most intriguing: here the Baroque and Palladian combine to splendid effect.
The largest room of the house is the entrance hall, shown here in this photograph. A room with a full complement of external architectural details: stone walls, pedimented doorcases, sculptural reliefs, deep galleries, niches and false windows. The sculptural effect is magnificent, but odd for an interior. Essentially the outside has been brought in, and the upholstered furniture looks slightly ill at ease.
This interior is peculiarly English. Rather than being based on Palladio, this form was really invented by Inigo Jones (1576-1652), who to the eighteenth-century Palladians was as much to be imitated as the Italian architect. This room was directly inspired by the hall at the Queen’s House, Greenwich, designed by Jones in the 1630s. Later Georgian architects would reconsider the merits of this approach, notably Robert Adam (1728-92).
AND Horace Walpole grew up there. Just sayin’.
(via 18thcenturylove)
wikipics:
Atrium of Halifax Town Hall, West Yorkshire, England
(via my-ear-trumpet)
mesbeauxarts:
Robert Adam. Library at Kenwood House. 1764-1779. Ceiling paintings by Antonio Zucchi.
Painting: David Martin. Lord Mansfield Chief Justice of England. 1775.
Marble bust: Joseph Nollekens. William Murray, 1st Earl Of Mansfield. 1779.
Adam style library.
Kenwood House. London, UK.
callumthedog:
Baron Hill - The Abandoned Mansion in the Woods
(via filledwithroses)
mesbeauxarts:
George Willison (attributed). Portrait of Robert Adam. ca. 1770-1774.
Oil on canvas.
National Portrait Gallery. London, UK.
audienceaudience:
Paris’s Hell’s Café from 19th-century
Le Café de L’Enfer was a Hell-themed café in Paris’ red light district (aka Pigalle, the neighborhood of the Moulin Rouge), created in the late 19th century and operating up ’til sometime around the middle of the 20th.
“A hot spot called Hell’s Café lured 19th-century Parisians to the city’s Montmartre neighborhood—like the Marais—on the Right Bank of the Seine. With plaster lost souls writhing on its walls and a bug-eyed devil’s head for a front door, le Café de l’Enfer may have been one of the world’s first theme restaurants. According to one 1899 visitor, the café’s doorman—in a Satan suit—welcomed diners with the greeting, “Enter and be damned!” Hell’s waiters also dressed as devils. An order for three black coffees spiked with cognac was shrieked back to the kitchen as: “Three seething bumpers of molten sins, with a dash of brimstone intensifier!”
(via lord-kitschener)
navigus:
Once upon a time, there was a wizard who knew what Heaven and Hell looked like. In fact, he designed them. He also drew the greatest royal palaces that Britain has ever dreamed of, and a massive new Parliament building. He assembled complete, monumental cities and prototype skyscrapers. The name of this magician was Joseph Michael Gandy, and he did all this in the first few decades of the 19th century. Gandy was doomed to disappointment - he built very little in the real world, and was destined to be comprehensively eclipsed by another architect. He died a mad, penniless, abandoned old man. But he was no failure, because his extraordinary visions survive.
bukarin:
Anonymous renaissance artist, a repertory of capitals, from the ‘North Italian Album’, ink on velum. Courtesy Sir John Soane’s Museum.
