Description
This is a fascinating study of the distinctive decoration that once adorned the houses lived in by people from all social levels during the Early Modern period. Although its principal focus is on the Welsh Marches it places the numerous surviving examples of wall paintings in a national context which explores the iconography and individual messages of those who commissioned them as well as the craftsmen who executed them and the techniques that they employed. The book is meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated. It should be read by all who are interested in the social and cultural history of the Tudor and Stuart age. – Professor Malcolm Airs, author of The Buildings of Britain: Tudor and Jacobean
Through her meticulous research and analysis, Kathryn Davies paints a vivid picture of these little-known examples of interior decoration. By drawing together the art, architecture and cultural values of the period, she raises our appreciation of their value and need to conserve these rare fragments of social history. – David McDonald, Chair, Institute of Historic Building Conservation
Kathryn Davies’ book is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand, conserve or even find wall paintings – because there are more than we know of, even with the expanded gazetteer in this new edition. The author knows her subject and makes connections with social and economic history high and low. Though rooted in the Marches, this study is based on wide reading and long practical experience. The material culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, often bold, crude, snobbish and demonstrative, is revealed as both more colourful and quirkier than we usually suppose. Ostriches, codpieces, rabbits and knots riot across the page. – David Brock, Historic England
Many ordinary people in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had art in their homes – not the high art of easel paintings but a humbler form of art painted directly onto their walls, telling us something important about their social and cultural lives.
This wide-ranging and detailed study, the result of many years of research, looks at what this decoration was, how it was done and its significance for those commissioning it. An extensive gazetteer includes photographs of the majority of the paintings.
Contents: 1 The characteristics of wall painting; 2 The historical context of housing; 3 Social and cultural context; 4 The houses and the people who lived in them; 5 Practical and technical aspects of wall painting; 6 Cost of painted decoration; 7 Sources of design; 8 Significance; 9 Conclusions
Dr Kathryn Davies works as an independent consultant for planning and historic environment issues, including casework for Historic England, historic buildings advice, conservation area work and advising on wall paintings.
Paperback with flaps | 304 pages | 260 x 204mm | 2008, revised and updated Aug 2024
c.200 colour photographs
ISBN 9781910839706
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