The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged, furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions. That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the house's devastation in the 1798 uprising. Mostly hitherto unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the day. Above stairs, the inventories show the evolving collecting habits and tastes of eighteenth-century patrons across Ireland and how the interiors of great town and country houses were arranged or responded to new materials and new ideas. The meticulous recording of the contents of the kitchen and scullery likewise sheds light on life below stairs. Itemized equipment required for the brewhouse, dairy, stables, garden and farmyard reflects the at times significant scale of the communities the houses supported and the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency at some of the demesnes. A comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items forming the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword together with short preambles to the inventories set the households in their historical context. Illustrated with contemporary engravings of the houses and with portraits of the owners of the time, the inventories will appeal to country-house visitors, historians of interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture as well as to scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors, bibliographers, lexicographers and novelists. The eighteenth century is the period onto which the Knight of Glin directed his penetrating gaze as art historian. The book is dedicated to his memory.

A major contribution to our knowledge of the Worcester porcelain factory in its early years, based on a single large and elaborate dinner service commissioned by an Irish family. 2020 Winner of the American Ceramic Circle Book Award The early years of the famous Worcester porcelain factory established by Dr Wall have always been a little mysterious, owing to the destruction of the records of thebusiness for this period. Alec Cobbe's discovery of family papers listing the purchases over a period of years of a particularly beautiful and ornate table set have enabled him to give a vivid glimpse of how the factory interacted with its customers. He is able to describe the commissioning of perhaps the largest service of first period Worcester porcelain on record by Thomas and Lady Betty Cobbe for Newbridge House Co. Dublin. It was bought in stages from 1763 as the family travelled from Dublin to Bath each year, stopping at Worcester en route, as other Irish gentry did. The Cobbe service, uniquely in the context of British porcelain, was accompanied by a full set of Irish silver and steel cutlery fitted with Worcester porcelain handles matching the service. The various pieces of porcelain and their historical context are described as well as their painted decoration, and the sources for it. The later history of the service is outlined and its gradual dispersal in the nineteenth century, culminating in a final sale of the remaining pieces lot by lot in a Christie's sale in 1920. This book celebrates Cobbe's reassembly of more than 160 pieces of the original service over a period of more than thirty years and their return to Newbridge following their exhibition in the State Apartments at Dublin Castle. Overall, the book gives an important insight into Irish social life and patronage in the mid-eighteenth century. Alec Cobbe was born in Ireland and still resides in Newbridge House, Co. Dublin, where his ancestors have lived since it was built in the middle of the eighteenth century. He practises as an artist and designer. As a passionate collector, he added to his family's historic collections and assembled the world's largest group of composer-owned keyboard instruments.

A lavishly-illustrated and meticulously-documented catalogue of the Cobbe Collection, which includes over forty keyboard instruments around half of which were owned and played by composers such as Purcell, Mahler, Chopin and Elgar. The keyboard repertoire comprises one third of the whole of Western music. The very instruments chosen by composers themselves form the heart of the Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands. The eighteen owned or played by Purcell, JohannChristian Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Mahler and Elgar, to name a few, are the largest group assembled anywhere of these tangible and audible relics connecting with the musical minds of the past. The collection otherwise comprises a further twenty or so instruments that were chosen to represent instrument-makers who were highly regarded or patronised by composers, all maintained in playing order. Each entry in this lavishly-illustrated catalogue includes a history of the piece, its provenance, technical data and colour photographs of the instrument and notable details. Here, for example, is the piano on which Chopin played his final public concert; we learn of the strips of lead that Mahler had fixed to the hammers in the bass register and that Elgar's Broadwood was delivered to Worcester by river. More than simply a catalogue of a collection, this volume will fascinate anyone with an interest in keyboard music, as well as music historians, instrument makers and restorers, and those concerned with issues of 'authentic' performance. ALEC COBBE has collected musical instruments owned bycomposers for many years. He is also a distinguished designer, and specialises in the decor and hanging of pictures in stately homes; in early 2014 an exhibition of his work was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum.