Items related to 18 Folgate Street: The Life of a House in Spitalfields

18 Folgate Street: The Life of a House in Spitalfields - Softcover

 
9780099437369: 18 Folgate Street: The Life of a House in Spitalfields
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
Growing up in California, Dennis Severs fell in love with the England he saw in old black and white movies. At seventeen he came to London, looking for a home with a heart. In 1979 he found one, a run-down silk-weaver's house in Spitalfields, and over the next twenty years he transformed it into an enchanted time-capsule, transporting us back to the eighteenth century. From cellar to roof, he filled 18 Folgate Street with original objects and furniture, found in the local markets, lit by candles and chandeliers. More than that, he invented a family to live here, the Jervis family, Huguenot weavers who fled persecution in France in 1688, and bought the house in 1724. Sounds and scents bring their world to life, always just out of sight - floorboards creak, fires crackle, a kettle hisses on the hob. Visitors step through the frame of time, like entering an old master painting. As we move from room to room on a tour you will never forget, we follow the Jervis story from the days of the Georges and the Regency to harsher Victorian times - and even to the attic room of Scrooge himself.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
The innocuous-sounding address of 18 Folgate Street is here the book of the tour of Dennis Severs' extraordinary recreation of a Georgian household in Spitalfields, a piece of theatrical still life, mesmerisingly conjured. Severs died at the end of 1999, but this alternative written version, with the sympathetic editing of Jenny Uglow, a gallery of photographs and an introduction by London's literary curator and, indeed, biographer, Peter Ackroyd, provides a unique posthumous flat-pack tour, time-capsuled for the future curious.

Severs, a more-English-than-thou Californian, bought the house in a derelict street just outside the Square Mile in 1979, and set upon installing himself and his lifelong acquisitions. Friends called it a "restoration comedy", but it was to become a historical drama, with Severs' declaration that "my canvas is your imagination". He installed the fictional Gervais/Jervis family, Huguenot silk weavers, from whose affairs Severs himself weaves his narrative magic. Beginning in the basement larder and kitchen, he takes the visitor-reader on a parade upwards, though the parlour, dining room, drawing room, bedroom, boudoir and attic of the house, summoning drama and narrative from the strategically arranged and decorated rooms, heavy with the air of recent occupation. At its best, it resembles a talking book, each room an episode linking to the next, and with Severs' constant evocation of duality, symmetry and dimension as he finds art in balance rather than chronological fidelity. Taste, however, can be a cruel, haranguing thing, something Severs shares when his singular, proportionate vision of the "Space Between" takes pleasure in reading too much into things. Does it work as well on the page? Inevitably, not fully; the effect is reductive, and contrary to the very principle of Severs' ambition. However, this quirky externalisation of this eccentric Anglophile's life, and its epoch-tripping celebration of etymology, social history, hearth drama and cultural and philosophical commentary, allied to tantalisingly brief snatches of autobiography, serves as the final will and testament of Dennis Severs, who rejuvenated the soul of a house with his own charged, imaginative kindling. Ultimately, the house's motto stands as the book's--"Aut Visum Aut Non": you either see it or you don't. --David Vincent

Review:
'He had a wonderful ability to evoke the past and breathe life into it...beautifully designed’ -- Country Life

‘Breathtaking, dreamlike...it deserves your attention’ -- Time Out

‘Reading it is like reading a novel or even watching a film – deeply intriguing and romantic...' -- Sunday Times

‘This is a book for anyone who like to sit by the fire with a glass of wine and not worry too much about he fashions of the world. ' -- Jeanette Winterson, The Times

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherVintage
  • Publication date2002
  • ISBN 10 0099437368
  • ISBN 13 9780099437369
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780701172794: 18 Folgate Street

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780701172794
Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2001
Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 85.08
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 2.77
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 84.69
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 3.17
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 84.50
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 3.41
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 106.54
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 3.37
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Paperback Quantity: 2
Seller:
Save With Sam
(North Miami, FL, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # VIB0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 118.13
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Dennis Severs
Published by Vintage (2002)
ISBN 10: 0099437368 ISBN 13: 9780099437369
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Pieuler Store
(Suffolk, United Kingdom)

Book Description Condition: new. New Ed. Book is in NEW condition. Satisfaction Guaranteed! Fast Customer Service!!. Seller Inventory # PSN0099437368

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
£ 148.28
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 24.99
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds