Magnificent Entertainments: Temporary Architecture for Georgian Festivals - Hardcover

Doderer-Winkler, Melanie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300186428 ISBN 13: 9780300186420

Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre, 2013

Synopsis

A thoroughly original study of ephemeral architecture and design, Magnificent Entertainments examines the spectacular displays created for large-scale public and private celebrations in the Georgian period. The book focuses on a number of specific occasions - including elegant country fêtes, lavish galas, royal events and historical commemorations - that employed elaborate decorative measures to outshine all other attractions and diversions. It explores the role of leading architects Robert Adam and William Chambers as well as members of the Royal Academy of Arts in creating exceptional party settings for royalty and aristocracy, and adapting well-known public venues for one-night extravaganzas.
The author delves into the materials used for construction and embellishment throughout the period: artful applications of dyed sugar, sand, marble dust or chalk lent lustre and colour to tables and floors, whilst painted scenery and transparencies created from thousands of variegated lamps transformed existing venues into unfamiliar marvels. Spectacular stand-alone firework temples and temporary reception rooms were often crafted of little more than wood, canvas and paint.
Drawing on primary sources including personal letters, diary entries, bills and newspaper accounts, this book investigates how successful these fanciful designs were in creating fleeting moments of delight with lasting impact and popular appeal.

About this title

About the Author

Melanie Doderer-Winkler is an art historian and former furniture specialist at Christie’s, London. She writes and lectures about the splendour and pageantry of eighteenth-century entertaining.

Review

'[This] impressive doctoral thesis turned fascinating narrative shows us how many different forms the human desire to celebrate took in the eighteenth century – and how irresistible conspicuous consumption has always been. Melanie Doderer-Winkler’s exhaustively detailed tome documents the myriad skills of hundreds of designers, artists, craftsmen and labourers at the service of the rich and the high born for parties, ceremonies, parades, pageants and processions – the secular rituals that bind these excessive communities.'—Marina Vaizey, V&A Magazine (Marina Vaizey V&A Magazine 2014-04-01)

'Magnificent Entertainments is the first book dedicated to this interesting subject and it is meticulously researched and illustrated with hundreds of rare, contemporary views depicting long-vanished triumphs.'—Tim Knox, Country Life

(Tim Knox Country Life 2014-01-22)

"Clear the decks for Melanie Doderer-Winkler's sumptuous Magnificent Entertainments, an immaculately researched, written and illustrated blockbuster in the temporary pavilions, ballrooms, feasts and fantasties that Georgian foppery so delighted in."—Nicky Haslam, The Spectator (Nicky Haslam The Spectator 2014-11-23)

‘Doderer-Winkler’s great achievement as an archaeologist of the ephemeral is to bring such events to vivid life from the claims of prints and press releases, eyewitness accounts – and, critically, the bill.’—Christopher Woodward, World of Interiors Magazine (Christopher Woodward World of Interiors 2014-04-01)

Edition details

• Publisher: Paul Mellon Centre
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0300186428
• ISBN 13: 9780300186420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 255