Surface Value: Ways of Seeing Decoration in Architecture

Abstract

The long 18th century was a period of intense investment in elite architecture in Britain which sustained an extensive craft culture in carving, modelling, and joinery. Yet decoration is largely marginalised or ignored by architectural historians. This antipathy to the enrichment of buildings is not particular to Britain and reflects a wider discourse on the architecture of many periods and places. By situating past and present attitudes to 18th-century decoration in Britain within a wider historiography, this paper reveals the prejudices which still attend the discussion of ornament and craft production in architecture. Conversely, it explores revisionist perspectives on craft and decoration and considers how they can inform architectural history and contribute to a more holistic understanding of building production. Despite a recent, widespread revival of interest in ornament, however, scholarship continues to privilege conceptual issues over the material practices of decoration. Disciplinary boundaries have militated against an integrated approach to architecture and decoration and historians of sculpture and architecture have overlooked significant common ground. Lacunae in the historiography of decoration in 18th-century British architecture call for approaches which integrate the analytical and methodological tools of architectural and sculpture history.