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THE PAUL MELLON CENTRE PUBLICATIONS The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment by Celina Fox This book is about the people who did the work. The arts of industry encompassed both liberal and mechanical realms – not simply the representation of work in the fine art of painting, but the mechanical arts or skills involved in the processes of industry itself. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources, Celina Fox argues that mechanics and artisans used four principal means to describe and rationalise their work: drawing, model making, societies and publications. These four channels, the central themes of this engrossing book, provided the basis for experimentation and invention, explanation and classification, validation and authorisation, promotion and celebration, bringing them into the public domain and achieving progress as a true part of the Enlightenment. The book also examines the status of the mechanical arts from the medieval period to the seventeenth century and explains how and why entrepreneurs, mechanics and artisans presented themselves to the world in portraits, and how industry was depicted in landscape and genre painting. The book concludes in the early nineteenth century when, despite the drive towards specialisation and exclusivity and the rise of the profession of engineer, the broad sweep of the mechanical arts retained a distinct identity for far longer than has generally been recognised. The debates their presence provoked are still with us today. Celina Fox is an independent scholar and museums advisor. She was the editor of London World City. October 352 pp. 280x200mm. 200 b/w + 60 colour illus. ISBN 978-0-300-16042-0 £40.00 Brilliant Effects: A Cultural History of Gem Stones and Jewellery by Marcia Pointon Diamonds are not for ever – nor necessarily are they a girl’s best friend. Ranging from precious stones as raw wealth to the symbolic properties of gems whether in Antiquity and the Bible or in Victorian art and literature, this book examines how small-scale and valuable artefacts have figured in systems of belief and in political and social practice in Europe since the Renaissance. Marcia Pointon offers an in-depth study that, drawing on unpublished evidence, reveals the importance of artefacts produced by jewellers and horologists, and their significance in shaping people’s understanding of the world they live in. Pointon explores the capacity of jewels not only to fascinate but also to create disorder and controversy throughout history: what is materially precious is invariably contentious, whether in religious or in secular society; when what is precious is not gold bars or bonds but finely crafted artefacts made from hard-won imported materials, the stakes are particularly high. The struggle for control of both material and meaning is paramount, whether in scientific discourse (as with John Ruskin’s crystallography) or in pictorial imagery, such as Poussin’s interpretation of the origin of coral. Marcia Pointon is Professor Emerita in History of Art, Manchester University, and Honorary Research Fellow, Courtauld Institute of Art, London. September 368 pp. 290x245mm. 100 b/w + 150 colour illus. ISBN 978-0-300-14278-5 £45.00
THE PAUL MELLON CENTRE PUBLICATIONS A Biographical Dictionary of Sculptors in Britain, 1660–1851 by Ingrid Roscoe, Emma Hardy and M. G. Sullivan This remarkable dictionary provides information on the work of over 3,000 sculptors working in Britain between 1660 and 1851. It is a substantially expanded edition of Gunnis’s Dictionary of British Sculptors, the primary source for information on church monuments, portrait busts, carved fireplaces and other sculpture since its publication in 1951. The editorial team, and invited experts in the field, have drawn on a mass of archival and scholarly material, including Gunnis’s own extensive unpublished archive, to rewrite all the major lives of the sculptors, and to add over 1,000 new ones. Each entry provides a brief bio graphy of the sculptor, where possible, followed by a list of his or her known works. Each work is identified by date and location, past or present. Provenance, materials, exhibitions, known preparatory sketches and models are also recorded. The book contains a full list of bibliographical references and an index of names and of locations. Ingrid Roscoe is an independent scholar, Emma Hardy is collections manager at the Geffrye Museum and M. G. Sullivan is curator of sculpture at the Ashmolean Museum. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and The Henry Moore Foundation September 1616 pp. 232x154mm. ISBN 978-0-300-14965-4 £80.00 Richard Norman Shaw (revised edition) by Andrew Saint Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912) was the most fertile, representative and immediately influential domestic architect of the late Victorian period in England. His training and early career coincided with the heyday of the Gothic Revival, in which style he designed a handful of original churches. His most prolific period of practice saw the triumph of the ‘Old English’ and ‘Queen Anne’ domestic styles which are largely associated with his name. A series of powerful urban buildings designed towards the end of Shaw’s career reveals him as one of the foremost proponents of a revived classicism. In each of these styles the piquant originality of Shaw’s designs and the brilliance of his planning captivated his contemporaries in the architectural and social world alike. He became the undisputed leading architect of his day and the precursor of such different talents as Lutyens and Voysey. In the United States, Shaw’s distinctive contribution to English domestic architecture played a formative part in the evolution of the Shingle Style. This new edition of a major work offers a completely revised text and new introduction and is now illustrated generously in colour, with many specially commissioned photographs. Andrew Saint is the General Editor of The Survey of London and the author of The Image of the Architect, Towards A Social Architecture: The Role of School-Building in Post- War England and Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry. October 488 pp. 280x220mm. 200 b/w + 60 colour illus. ISBN 978-0-300-15526-6 £40.00
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