Main Content
Summary
Author: Audsley, W. & G.
Title: Polychromatic decoration as applied to buildings in the mediaeval styles.
Publication: London, Henry Sotheran 1882.
Price: Sold
Reference: 07390
Full Description
Large folio. vii + (2) + 32pp, 36 chromolitho plates, each with accompanying leaf of descriptive text. Publisher’s cloth, spine repaired. Roderick Gradidge’s copy.
A “practical and suggestive guide” for architects and decorators, incorporating handsome chromolitho plates showing polychrome decorative schemes suitable for the walls of churches, and providing useful guidance in painting in oil, tempera and other mediums. It seems to have been inspired by an earlier French publication on the decorative paintings designed by Viollet-le-Duc for the side chapels of the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, and both books reflect contemporary enthusiasm for painted polychrome decoration as a means of covering large areas of what would otherwise be blank wall surface in Gothic Revival churches and public buildings.