The Idea of Villa Castagna
A garden is both a real place, and a cloud of possibilities. What you will find here will be both something real, and something that may or may not become real. For this reason you will find no map: Instead you will meet fragments, part real, part possible.
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Category Archives: Arts and Crafts Movement
Pavilions, Fabriques, and the Reverential Copy
[This paper discusses a category of building that is related to, and sometimes overlaps with, the pavilion: the fabrique. The fabrique is not to be confused with the folly, although both are found in parks and gardens and the terms … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Arts and Crafts Movement, Baroque architecture, Baroque Gardens, Daylesford, English Gardens, Fabriques, Garden History, Rome, Town and Village, Uncategorized, Villa Castagna, Villas, Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens
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Tagged Arts and Crafts, Australian Gardens, Bagatelle, Baroque Gardens, Bramante; pavilion, chateau de Groussay; Woerlitz, creative gardens, Daylesford, English Gardens, fabrique, Fabriques, folly, Garden History, Garden Sculpture, Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens
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Portmeirion 3. How Serious is Portmeirion?
The trauma of the First World War seems to have manifested itself in the ‘silly ass’ artistic culture of the 1920s. Novelists like Margery Allingham, and even Dorothy L. Sayers, created their detective heroes as upper class twits who took … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Arts and Crafts Movement, Baroque Gardens, Fabriques, Town and Village, Uncategorized
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Tagged Portmeirion
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The Monkey Puzzle Parterre at Biddulph Grange
At the National Trust’s Biddulph Grange garden in England they have a little terraced gardens in the section called ‘Italy’ which has four small monkey puzzle trees in a little box-edged parterre centred on a stone vase (Figs 1–3). This … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Arts and Crafts Movement, Baroque Gardens, Garden History, Montacute, Plants, Uncategorized, Villa Castagna, Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens
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Tagged Australian Gardens, Bolzano, Garden History, monkey puzzle trees, Tynesfield, Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens
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Portmeirion 2. Portmeirion and the Picturesque
The most useful way of approaching Portmeirion is through the concept of the picturesque. Williams-Ellis (or, as everyone calls him, Clough) explains how he liked sailing around the Mediterranean and enjoyed the view of coastal towns from the sea. He … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Arts and Crafts Movement, English Gardens, Fabriques, Garden History, Town and Village, Uncategorized
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Tagged Art Deco architecture, Arts and Crafts, Baroque Gardens, Clough Williams-Ellis, Elizabethan architecture, Fabriques, Garden History, Portmeirion
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Portmeirion 1. Introduction
People don’t always get Portmeirion (Fig. 1). For example, it has been argued that it is a proto-Post-Modernist work, created by an architect trying to subvert the modernist norm long before Venturi and Scott-Brown came on the scene. But this … Continue reading →
Posted in All Posts, Architecture, Art, Arts and Crafts Movement, Baroque Gardens, Elizabethan Architecture, English Gardens, Fabriques, Garden History, Town and Village, Uncategorized
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Tagged Art Deco architecture, Arts and Crafts, Baroque Gardens, Clough Williams-Ellis, Elizabethan architecture, Fabriques, Garden History, Portmeirion
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Goddard’s in York: An Arts and Crafts House Made with Chocolate
Goddard’s is an interesting house and garden in the suburbs of York (Fig. 1). It was designed by Walter Brierly, the Lutyens of York, and has many Lutyenesque moments. (It is not to be confused with Lutyens’ building with the … Continue reading →
On Gentlemen and William Morris
Some of William Morris’s bon mots have not worn well. In the local gift shop they have chalked up the phrase ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. But … Continue reading →