I have previously noted how much I have always enjoyed the work of Sydney R. Jones (1881-1966) whose fabulous illustrations grace the pages of books like The Manor Houses of England, The Village Homes of England, Old Houses in Holland and How to Draw Houses, which I have previously highlighted on this site. In a similar fashion, I have also collected some of the works by R. J. Brown, whose pen-and-ink drawings of vernacular houses and village buildings add so much to the descriptions found in English Village Architecture, English Farmhouses, and The English Country Cottage.

In this age of photography and wondrous digital effects, the sublime results that can be gained via the illustrator’s trained hand are often forgotten. Yet there are few substitutes for the range of evocative feelings that can be elicited from a fine pencil or pen-and-ink drawing.

Allan T. Adams - Illustrator

Recently I have had the opportunity to marvel at the skill of an architectural illustrator who has found his way onto my Twitter feed—Allan T. Adams. Just as I was thinking that the only source of fine illustrations of ancient English buildings were old books, his work has renewed my enthusiasm for this art form and provided much enjoyment.

Allen T. Adams - Illustrator

Mr. Adams has much experience illustrating historic buildings, as he is retired from Historic England (formerly English Heritage) having worked on a number of projects, such as reconstruction drawings.

Allen T. Adams - Illustrator

He has been illustrating historic buildings since 1981--creating drawn records for archive purposes, and illustrating books and other publications. His widely-recognized skill and experience eventually led to his election as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2008.

Allen T. Adams - Illustrator

I will share just a few examples of his very fine work here; as you can see, he is highly skilled in sharply-detailed pen-and-ink drawings as well as exquisite watercolour illustrations.

Allen T. Adams - Illustrator

Mr. Adams has a member page on the Society of Architectural Illustrators site HERE as well as a Flicker page HERE. 

You will also be well-rewarded by following him on Twitter at @allantadams -- where he regularly shares examples of his illustrative work.

While I imagine a number of people throughout the UK are familiar with the handsome work of artist Jonathan Myles-Lea, he is clearly not a household name here in the US. Best known for his house and landscape portraits, his work recalls past masters like John Constable and Johannes Kip. My personal favorites feature the traditional “bird’s eye views” of country houses—a style popular throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A view of Burghley House - from the west. Image Rights: Jonathan Myles-Lea.

Though Myles-Lea had been well-established as a noted painter of landscapes and houses, the commission he received for the April 29, 2009 cover of Country Life, featuring a fantasy 10-acre estate, clearly solidified his reputation as a worldwide talent. The resulting Dream Acres project was a central part of the 10-week series appearing in the magazine—featuring the stylized aerial views for which he has become particularly celebrated.


Other work which Myles-Lea has become notably associated with are his projects for Prince Charles at Highgrove and his aerial illustration of Sir Roy Strong’s garden, The Laskett, in 1994. It is no surprise that gardens and houses have become his primary subjects, as he graduated from The University of London with a Bachelors Degree in The History of Art & Architecture. As you might expect, his high standards and superlative work has resulted in one notable commission leading to yet another.

Plas Teg, Clwyd, North Wales, 1991. Image Rights: Jonathan Myles-Lea

The artist maintains studios in both England and the Unites States, and can be commissioned to paint portraits of your own home and garden. Much of his sketches, photos and other archival material are being collected by The University of Oxford and a book is reportedly in the works.

Personally, I have always found these traditional “bird’s eye views” rather enchanting, and having recently viewed my own house in a 3D view on Google Earth, I may attempt to use it as a guide to paint my own house portrait in this manner. A task for another time, however…

Inspiration for a future work of my own? Perhaps...

A Tudor Revival interior that embraces its unique details and original woodwork. Courtesy Stonewood, LLC

I was heartened to see a story on Houzz the other day regarding the continued popularity of the Tudor Revival style in American homes, including an outline of its basic visual elements. Architect Steven Randal does a fine job of distilling the style's most essential design cues, and best of all, the story includes some excellent photographic examples of contemporary Tudor Revival interiors. The collection of images included with the article fully dispels the notion that these rooms are dark and dusty museum set-pieces.

Another room that blends with contemporary style. Courtesy Margot Hartford Photography

The story was refreshing for another reason (one which I have noted more than once) regarding the “typical” rooms one sees when visiting Houzz. More and more, it seems that almost every room featured on the website is bathed in white; white woodwork, white cabinets, white floors, white furniture…all combined with a very trendy, “hip” design aesthetic that looks like it was inspired by any one of a hundred DIY-design-craft -blogs. I’ve found this to become fairly tiresome, and it’s only remedied by entering a more specific site search for rooms offering more traditional styles, more color, or more of anything not defined by “trendy.”

As I noted, the photos accompanying this story are helpful, in that they offer a clean and contemporary look that embraces each home’s Tudor details instead of painting them out (in white) or de-emphasizing them. This is not always an easy problem to solve, as we will eventually be looking to update the interiors of our own house, and need all the inspiration we can find.

You can reference the full article HERE.

There's no doubt about it – I love old books, especially books on architecture. Unfortunately, many of the best examples are fairly rare, and when available are often obtainable only at a very high price.
 
One book I've had my eye on for some time is Alan Jackson's The Half-Timber House: Its Origin, Design, Modern Plan, and Construction – which was originally published in several editions, from about 1912 through 1929. What makes the book particularly interesting for me is that the author is American, and he studies the characteristics of Tudor-revival homes from an early 20th century viewpoint--analyzing the style's appropriateness for [his] time and offering both good and bad examples of how it might be adapted for American homes.

As far as the text is concerned, it may be slightly “wordy” for the average reader; the language is perhaps too flowery and expressive for today's tastes, and might have benefited from a firm editing. Nevertheless, it makes for an interesting read, especially since the period when it was written was a time when Tudor-revival was one of the most popular of American residential styles.
                                       


THE WAY THE ILLUSTRATION APPEARS IN THIS EDITION.

Behind Jackson's clear admiration for the warmth and comfort offered by the “Old English” style, you can sense the popular notions and attitudes that caused so many of these homes to be built across the United States from 1900 to about 1935. Interestingly, a bit of waspishness sneaks in as he discusses other “sub-types” of half-timbered architecture, specifically examples found in France (Norman) and Germany, both of which he subtly dismisses as seeming “foreign” to most Americans.

While I have come close to purchasing some original editions of this book on Ebay, they are uncommon and usually demand a stiff price. Happily, the recent proliferation of publishers who are now offering facsimile copies of the book via page-scanning of the originals (now in the public domain) has made it easy to add a copy to my architecture library.     But in that realization there remains a critical caveat.

Quality Matters

One of the reason I love old books is that I find them attractive, and in the best examples, quite beautiful. While I have not seen an original copy of The Half-Timber House, it looks like it was produced with some level of care and attentiveness to design—all of which suffered greatly in the repro copy I purchased from Forgotten Books via Amazon.

Be aware that there are several publishers offering this book, and the prices vary from $7.56 for a paperback version (my sample) to almost $30.00 for a hardcover reprint.  The quality of the final product will depend on how the scanning equipment was set up and what type of sample was used—the Forgotten Books edition looks like it was scanned not from an original, but from a poor xerox copy. While the text was of acceptable quality, most of the illustrations were useless—not looking like halftone photos at all (as in the original) but more like super-high-contrast black and white drawings, offering little detail and large areas where the image dropped out completely. I suppose one issue might be that the contrast setting on the scanner was set extra high to make the text clearer (and ruin the halftone images in the process) but the illustrations are so poor that I find it impossible to believe that an original copy of the book was used.
Perhaps a better solution would be to purchase the book on CD; I have seen some examples available on Ebay as well, where the book has been scanned into PDF and the images look fairly decent. In any case, I would recommend to any buyer that if page samples of these reproduction copies are available to view, they take a careful look to see that the quality is acceptable.

As a lover of beautiful books and illustrations, one of my favorite resources on the Internet is Bibliodyssey, which features a wide array of works highlighting the art and science of historical book illustration. Curated by Sidney's Paul Peacay, the site is a treasure house of beautiful and exquisite period book illustrations.

Of interest to many of our readers would be this collection of designs from a volume known as the Tudor Pattern Book, (Bodleian MS. Ashmole 1504 ) which includes a wide range of illustrations, including herbal and bestiary images, as well as other decorative motifs. The images are full of imagination, color and detail, and are a great source of inspiration for those interested in Late Medieval and Tudor design. This particular example deserves to be treasured, as the site explains:

"Pattern books were practical tools and also helped to circulate artistic traditions and ideas around the manuscript making community. Because they were working documents, passing between many different people, few medieval pattern books have survived.

Researchers have estimated that this particular book was actually created about 1520; a slightly older (twin) version is now part of the Yale Center for British Art collection, which is housed in New Haven, Connecticut. To see all of the Tudor Pattern Book designs featured in this Bibliodyssey post, you can check out the article, HERE. Paul Peacay is also on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BibliOdyssey.

I have always been a huge fan of good architectural photography, whether it's Charles Latham's classic house images from Country Life or sharp new work from photographers like Andy Marshall at fotofacade.com. Nevertheless, there is something marvelously evocative about superb architectural drawings as well, and I have always been a big admirer of the work of Sydney R. Jones, who's illustrations for books such as P.H. Ditchfield's The Manor Houses of England as well as many other classics, like Old Houses in Holland, The Village Homes of England, and Thames Triumphant resonate so perfectly within these old volumes.

As a result, I was thrilled to add this tiny volume of just 64 pages to my book collection - How to Draw Houses, which was written and illustrated by Jones and published by The Studio in 1946.

Brief and appropriately illustrated by the author, the little book touches on the proper pencils and papers to use, as well as subjects such as proportion, perspective, light and shade, construction details, composition, textures and even thoughts about the illustration of interiors. Jones explains his overall purpose at the outset of the book:

"Because house and home mean so much to the majority of people, it is not surprising that boys and girls, grown-ups, and quite young children also, often, say, " I wish I could draw my house ". This is a very natural remark to make. But before the wish may end in good results, it is necessary to know how to proceed. John Ruskin once said, and with great truth, that almost anyone could learn to draw by really trying to do so. I therefore hope to show the methods of drawing houses, in order that anyone who wishes to try may succeed in drawing his or her own house, and the homes of other people too."

To see more of Jones' work, I'd suggest visiting the online Internet Archive, where a full copy of The Manor Houses of England (no longer in copyright) is available as a PDF here, as well as a number of other fine period books on architecture.

Doing a recent image search, I came across this wonderful source for antique, hand-colored prints that would look good in any traditional home. Hamburg, Germany-based le voyage en papier - marc dechow is a specialized gallery offering fine antique prints, old maps and rare books. The gallery sells only genuine prints, guaranteed to be over a hundred years old, printed at or near the date stated. Each example is completely hand colored by an expert colorist.


While the European collections were of most interest to us, the gallery's catalog cover vast subject matters and geographic locations, including the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceana, as well as subjects like costumes, fashion and orientalism. The selection is vast and impressive in quality, and any one of the many examples available would make a great gift or decoration for any home or office.


The gallery ships worldwide and prints can be ordered online from the catalog. To see what's available, go to http://www.antique-prints.de or contact the gallery at:

le voyage en papier - marc dechow
abendrothsweg 55
20251 hamburg
germany

phone: +49 40 420 421 4
email: info@antique-prints.de