Architecture
Book: The English House Vols 1 to 3
Architecture
In the last years of the nineteenth century, a German diplomat, architect and writer by the name of Hermann Muthesius was tasked with undertaking a survey of the English house. Fully immersed in the contemporary architectural scene - he was a friend of Charles Rennie Mackintosh - Muthesius produced an epic three-volume book dealing with the history and evolution of the grand English house in the rapidly modernising last half of the nineteenth century.
The 1904 book tracked how classical modes were cast off in favour of a new, adhoc romanticism, epitomised by the work of Shaw, Voysey, Lutyens and Mackintosh, and was an influential tome back in proto-modernist Europe.
Featuring the grand country piles and elaborate townhouses of the new industrial elite, the three volumes are reproduced in their monochrome entirety. One for history buffs and floorplan fetishists.
INFORMATION
The English House by Hermann Muthesius, introduction by Dennis Sharp (Frances Lincoln Limited, £125)
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