When delivering a talk, my preparation varies depending on the topic. In this instance, I had made a last minute decision to switch the theme from the Elizabethan Prodigy House to the Victorian Country House as I’d been struggling to condense so sprawling a topic as the prodigy house and cult of sovereignty. It’s always […]
My cousin, his husband and their gorgeous little girl Billie recently took up residence in their new home. Darren and I were delighted to receive an invitation to stay for the weekend – setting out after work on a Friday evening to brave the M40 and arriving to settle into a wonderful few days. I’d […]
The remit of the architect is inseparable from the character of the collector, which they sought to accommodate. Indeed, the architecture of the country house was used to house great works of art and the purpose of the setting was to complement this accordingly. West Wycombe’s entrance hall is particularly theatrical in this case, taking […]
I often find myself wishing that I owned a stash of Victorian fashion magazines – perhaps those gorgeously volumnious bound editions that are practically bursting at the seams with patterns, tidbits and illustrated fashion plates. Sigh, there’s the dream. Until I have the luxury of even more shelf space, there are plenty of ways to […]
Celebrated the world over for dexterous works across the arts, Benvenuto Cellini struck a virtuoso performance through the skill of his hand and the intricate workings of his mind. That ‘the devil is in the detail’ duly applies to this polymath. For example, consider Perseus with the head of Medusa, a feat in bronze with […]
