Designs for Cottage and Villa Architecture; Containing Plans, Elevations, Sections, Perspective Views, and Details, for the Erection of Cottages and Villas.

BROOKS, Samuel H.

Published by London, Thomas Kelly, [1839]., 1839

About this Item

DESIGNS FOR COTTAGE AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. FIRST EDITION. Large 4to. viii, 148, [4] pp., with 111 (CXI) engraved plates and final publisher's advertisements. Bound in the original blindtooled cloth (short tear to upper joint towards head), gilt-stamped title to spine. Ownership note on t-p: "Proprietą dell'Ing.re G. Balzaretto". Generally clean and bright, occasional foxing on some plates. An excellent copy. First and only edition, one of the earliest full-fledged Victorian house pattern books. The plates dated 1839 in [Brook s] remarkable book can no longer be called proto-Victorian. His so-called Grecian and Swiss villas, variants on the asymmetrically towered Italian villa, provided details of an oddity that builders were hardly ready to incorporate in terrace facades or even in semi-detached work much before the late 40 s . The illustrations are executed in a dry, very fine outline, and seldom include shrubbery or other scenery. But while Brooks s designs are neither so elegant nor so picturesque as those of his contemporaries, they were far more practical, and therefore better suited to his audience of suburban builders and inexperienced architects (Hitchcock, Early Victorian architecture, p. 425). Archer 23.1.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1653458618524

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Designs for Cottage and Villa Architecture; Containing Plans, Elevations, Sections, Perspective Views, and Details, for the Erection of Cottages and Villas.
• Publisher: London, Thomas Kelly, [1839].
• Publication Date: 1839
• Binding: Rilegato
• Condition: molto buono