Dollman, F.T. & Jobbins, J.R.
An analysis of ancient domestic architecture, exhibiting the best examples in Great Britain, from drawings and measurements taken on the spot.
London, Atchley & Co (with J.R.Jobbins and Joseph Masters) nd (1870s ?).
Full Description
4to. 2 vols. (2) + iii + (1) + (36)pp, 80 litho plates (numbered in suites, including 3 double page plates of which one carries 2 numbers) ; (6) + 13 + (3) + (40)pp, 79 litho plates (numbered in suites, including 2 double page plates of which one carries 2 numbers). Contemporary quarter morocco, cloth sides. Nineteenth century ink ownership inscription of D.Menzies. No subsequent ownership inscription but Sir Howard Colvin’s copy. Some intermittent light spotting but essentially a good copy.
A selection of some of “the best examples of mediaeval domestic architecture, whether valuable for their design and detail, or as containing suggestive features capable of adaptation by the practitioners of modern times”. As this indicates, Dollman and Jobbins’s volumes were intended not just as a historical or archaeological record of the mediaeval buildings illustrated in them, but to act as a source of architectural precedent from which architects of their own time could borrow when designing hospitals, schools, almhouses and other institutional buildings in Gothic Revival style. As such, they were a definite success and widely used. They were the first architectural pattern books to provide reliable measured illustrations of mediaeval buildings in Scotland such as Linlithgow Palace and Stirling Castle, and they also retain value as a accurate record of such now vanished buildings as the Guesten Hall at Worcester and the Refectory at Great Malvern. In compiling the volumes the authors had assistance from E.L.Blackburne, C.J.Shoppee, J.D.Wyatt (Scott’s draughtsman), and the Stamford architect Edward Browning. The volumes were initially issued in parts between 1859 and 1863, and the present set is an undated collected reissue, probably dating from the 1870s.