The Sources of John Abbott's Pattern Book

Abstract

The pattern book of the Devonshire plasterer, John Abbott II of Frithelstock (1639–1727), is a document which has attracted some attention, not just on the part of local historians interested in the rich corpus of West Country decorative plasterwork, but also from historians with a wider interest in decorative arts of the seventeenth century in England. Although the manuscript has the dates 1662 and 1665 repeated several times on the fly-leaf and end-papers, it draws on printed sources which had first appeared long before these dates. Abbott took over the trade of plasterer from his father Richard (1612–63) and his grandfather John I (1565–1635), and it has been suggested that the book may have been handed down within the family over two or more generations, which makes the dating of most of its contents particularly problematic. Abbott’s actual work is known to have survived at a number of sites in Devonshire, and his pattern book has sometimes been used in the often highly speculative business of assigning and dating the plasterwork in particular buildings; but as the substantial working notebook — more than 300 pages long — of a family of practising journeyman artists, it might also be expected to tell us something more generally about the design vocabulary and the working practices of craftsmen at this period in England.