(Papworth, Wyatt)
(Album of illustrations of 16th and 17th century English domestic architecture, compiled by Papworth from The British Architect, The Builder, Building News, etc.).
(Material mostly dates from 1880s).
Full Description
Folio. The album contains approx. 250 items, chiefly litho plates from architectural periodicals but including some text pages and cuttings, together with seven autograph letters addressed to Papworth and 5 leaves of MS notes by him. Contemporary cloth, rebacked.
Wyatt Papworth (1822-94) was Britain’s first serious architectural historian and is best remembered for his role in editing the Architectural Publication Society Dictionary, an encyclopaedic work putting on record everything that was known in late 19th century Britain about the country’s architectural past. The present album of illustrations of Tudor and Stuart domestic architecture shows Papworth’s methods of work, the plates being arranged in the date order of the houses which they illustrate, and also reflects the keen interest taken in Elizabethan architecture in the 1880s not just by Papworth but by such other architectural writers as Maurice Adams and the youthful J.A. Gotch. Much of the text material in the album relates to this period and to research into the roles of such personalities as John Thorpe, Robert Smythson and John Shute.