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
‘Someone, he [Austerlitz] added, ought to draw up a catalogue of types of buildings listed in order of size, and it would be immediately obvious that domestic buildings of less than normal size—the little cottage in the fields, the hermitage, … Continue reading
I have just acquired Tim Richardson’s The New English Garden. One of his bugbears is that the art world won’t take gardens seriously as art, a theme he develops in the introduction. I was reminded of my own Gardens and … Continue reading
What is the Baroque?
What is the Baroque? Is it a period, a style, a civilisation, or a critical concept? It is all of these. ‘Baroque’ was a term that came into use in the eighteenth century as a negative descriptor of the style … Continue reading →