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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unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into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.
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