Nesfield, W. Eden
Specimens of mediæval architecture chiefly selected from examples of the 12th and 13th centuries in France and Italy.
(London), Day and Son 1862.
Full Description
Folio. (6)ff incl. decorative title leaf, 100 litho plates (incl. 1 chromolitho). Publisher’s decorative stamped cloth (repeating the design on the volume’s title leaf), neatly rebacked. A good, clean copy internally. No ownership inscription but Gavin Stamp’s copy.
Nesfield (1835-88) travelled on the Continent in the 1850s with Norman Shaw, a fellow pupil of his in G.E. Street’s office and later his partner in the firm of Shaw and Nesfield, and this and a similar volume of sketches by Shaw brought them instant recognition as promising younger architects. Nesfield’s sketches are chiefly of the major early Gothic cathedrals of Northern France, e.g. Amiens, Bayeux, Chartres and Sens, but his style of draughtsmanship was vivider than that of previous English architects who had drawn these cathedrals. The volume’s pictorial title leaf, designed by Nesfield, incorporates human figures for which Nesfield’s friend, the painter Albert Moore, supplied sketches. This is the only edition, and although copies were produced in some quantity, only a minority of them remain in good condition today (the plates customarily become detached from the binding).