Away

The Man of Mode is travelling in Mitteleuropa for the next week or so.

Castletown and the Irish Georgian Society

A good article in yesterday's NY Times about the Irish Georgian Society, which has been restoring Georgian architectural treasures across Ireland for the past 50 years. Over the years, the IGS has battled indifference, and sometimes outright hostility, in its attempts to preserve the country's Georgian heritage.

At the head of the article is a photograph of Ireland's largest Palladian house, Castletown, in County Kildare (shown above, photograph from the NY Times).

NY Times article: A 50-Year Battle to Save Old Ireland

Palladian Days

The Villa Cornaro, which I wrote about in my last post, is the subject of a charming book written by its American owners -- Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House.

Sally and Carl Gable bought the villa in the late 1980s and keep it as a second home. Despite the grandeur of the house, the book is a surprisingly down-to-earth account of buying and renovating the property and living in an Italian village.

The book successfully combines several popular genres. It's the story of a lawyer and his wife from Atlanta moving to a small village in Italy and dealing with the colourful aspects of life there - think Peter Mayle transplanted from Provence to the Veneto. It's also a story about property renovation, and all the frustrations, expense and eventual pleasure of doing up an old house. In addition to the usual troublesome builders and dodgy plumbing, there are nests of scorpions and 450 year old frescos to deal with. Finally, it's a travel guide to Venice and the surrounding region, with some recipes thrown in for good measure.

It's not a heavyweight architectural book by any measure, but well worth a read to see how a modern American couple actually live in one of Palladio's villas.

Available from Amazon.com

Villa Cornaro

Image from Hans A. Rosbach

After visiting a couple of Palladio's smaller villas, we turn to one of his grander houses.

The Villa Cornaro, located in the village of Piombino Dese just outside Venice, was built in 1552-53. Palladio's great innovation on the Villa Cornaro is the two-story portico and loggia, with its double set of columns under a projecting pediment. It's the most distinctive feature of the house, and Palladio used it to great effect on both the front and back of the villa.

It's a highly impressive device, signaling the importance of the house and its owner to the rest of the village. But it does more than that. It visually pulls together the upper and lower floors of the house into a unified whole. It's also practical, creating a comfortable, shady space.


Image from www.boglewood.com

This was absolutely radical when Palladio used it here for the first time. It has since become such a standard architectural device that it's easy to forget the significance of Palladio's invention.

Many of the grand antebellum plantation houses in the South were built in a Palladian style, and the two-story portico and loggia was a recurring motif. This is a particularly fine example: Drayton Hall, in Charleston, South Carolina, built in 1742.



Palladio's design is hugely flexible and adaptable. Drayton Hall took it largely verbatim from Palladio, but with a pair of steps leading up the the portico instead of the single wide set of steps on the Villa Cornaro. However, here's another version of the same motif, which has been adapted extensively but where Palladio's influence is still recognizable. Here, the portico is curved, with no pediment. There's a single run of double-height columns instead of the separate columns on the first and second floors. The White House, south facade. Built 1792-1800.

Made in England?

The standards for labeling products as "Made in England" seem to be amazingly loose.

The John Lewis department store has just withdrawn from sale a GBP 350 suit that it advertised as "Made in England." The suit was made by Wensum, a UK-based suit manufacturer.

Turns out that the suit wasn't really Made in England. Apparently, only the sleeves and buttons were sewn on here - the rest of the suit was made overseas. When this came to light, John Lewis did the right thing and pulled it from sale.

Incidentally, Wensum is little-known to consumers, but it's a major producer of men's suits. It makes a lot of the made-to-measure suits sold by by UK retailers - from the very high end stores down to the lower end shops with a M-T-M offering.

From the Daily Telegraph - John Lewis drops misleading "Made in England" suit

Villa Poiana

Image by Hans A. Rosbach

After the Villa Saraceno, another of Palladio's smaller villas.

This is another early design from Palladio, from 1548-49, and is perhaps my favourite of all his buildings. It's a very restrained, even spare, classical design. It's so stripped back that it almost looks modern - or even postmodern, with its exaggerated use of simple shapes.

The only decorative element on the facade is the central arch with five oculi above the doorway. It's a simplified version of the design that Palladio frequently used for windows, with an arched central light flanked by columns or pilasters and a light on either side. Palladio used it so often that, even though he didn't invent it, it has became known as a "Palladian window".



As an example of Palladio's enduring appeal, here's a house in California directly inspired by the Villa Poiana.


David Pierce Hohmann architects

Villa Saraceno

Image from The Landmark Trust

From Palladio's grandest villa, La Rotonda, to one of his most modest, Villa Saraceno. It's essentially a farmhouse, with the attic level of the house originally used as a granary. The photograph below shows various outbuildings (not by Palladio) next to the villa.

The house dates from the 1540s and is one of Palladio's earliest works.


Image from La Repubblica

Even though it's a much simpler building than La Rotonda, the design has been enormously influential. The basic design has been used for a number of country houses in England, and there are countless town halls and post offices in the United States whose lineage can be traced back to Villa Saraceno. The picture below is the post office in Salem, Massachusetts.



Villa Saraceno is unique among Palladio's villas in that it's possible to rent the house for a holiday. The building had fallen into disrepair and was acquired in 1989 by the Landmark Trust, a British preservation charity. The Trust restored the house and turned it into a holiday home that can be rented by the week.

The Landmark Trust