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Architecture historian Timothy Mowl (Architecture Without Kings, An Insular Rococo) opens this excellent, elegant, entertaining defense of Elizabethan and Jacobean design, in all its gaudy excess, by comparing it to the two preeminent quill-dippers of its period: "Neither Shakespeare nor Ben Jonson was a 'Classical' playwright.... but the earthy richness of their imagery and the uninhibited gusto of their vocabulary has never been held against them." That's the kind of open mind Mowl would like us to bring to the churches, castles, townhouses, furnishings, and gardens of the era that began with Elizabeth I's accession to the throne in 1558 and ended with James I's death in 1625--an era whose architecture has traditionally been seen as a bombastic, busy melange of Tudor, timbered vernacular, and manic decorative strapwork until Inigo Jones's Whitehall Banqueting House of 1619 signaled a shift to "tasteful" classical purity.
At opening our minds Mowl richly succeeds. Not that, if you're of a classicist or otherwise minimalist bent (like this reviewer), you'll end up liking the architecture of this period any more than you ever have. It's just that Mowl is such a playful, eloquent writer and an erudite social historian that he raises what might have been a prosaic overview to the highest level possible--an absorbing, detail-packed narrative of a fascinating era, as told through its church tombs and castle towers, tapestries and theater sets, knot gardens, armchairs, and tableware. Even as fine full-color photographs take us through the grounds and interiors of such sites as St. Mary the Virgin at Bottesford, London's Staple Inn (which, with its timbered Snow White stripes, couldn't look more like what we commonly call "Tudor"), and Kenilworth Castle (one of the queen's many playgrounds), Mowl is introducing us--through a fine array of excerpts from period books, plays, and letters--to a dazzling cast of characters including writers John Donne, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe, plus several noblemen who built some of the great manors of the age. (A final chapter, on the "Jacobethan" revival of the 19th century, leads out into a glossary of terms, a directory of estates to visit in the UK, and a bibliography.) But certainly the figure that sets the dominant tone here is the remarkable Elizabeth. It was the shrewdness and mettle of this beloved "Virgin Queen" that brought strength and stability to England in the precarious wake of its split from Rome. But it was her love of music, theater, and all things grandiose and romantic, Mowl persuasively argues, that gave birth to an exuberant, eclectic architecture whose aim, in his words, was "to be unique, not correct." --Timothy Murphy
Book Description
From the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558 to James I's death in 1625, a delayed renaissance swept through England, pervading the domestic architecture and interiors of the day and signalling the emergence of a peculiarly English style that has had a romantic appeal ever since. This magnificently illustrated book, now made available as a paperback, makes good use of specially commissioned photography to reveal the exuberance and wild imagination that characterize the architecture, furniture and interior decoration of the period. Controversially, Timothy Mowl argues that the 'Jacobethan' style represents the last outpouring of a truly native genius that was stifled by the dead hand of classicism. The vivid narrative places this achievement against the backdrop of a rich social and cultural life, when the theatre flourished, masques and entertainments proliferated, chivalry was revived and gardens were created as extensions to the house.
Elizabethan & Jacobean Style,Timothy Mowl,Phaidon Press,071484120X,15th-16th Century Architecture,Architecture,Art,Criticism,Design - Decorative,General,History - General,Interior Design - General,Art / Design / Decorative,Baroque art,Decorative arts & crafts,England,Renaissance art,Residential buildings, domestic buildings,c 1500 to c 1600,c 1600 to c 1700
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