There is a sad symmetry about this very important book. In the early 1970s John Cornforth fought time for the possession of John Fowler's unsurpassed knowledge about Georgian interior decoration. Fowler was dying and his memory going, but Corn-forth won his battle and the result, published in 1974, was English Decoration in the Eighteenth Century - a miraculous work in many ways. Fowler died a few years later and scholarship moved on, with new material coming to light, but this collaboration between Corn-forth and Fowler continued to be essential reading. For me it has been a constant and valuable reference book. But in the mid-1990s Cornforth resolved it was time to update the work. Rather than merely revising the original he wanted to start again, to 'include more about the relationship between planning, decoration and furnishing', and to put the subject into more of a social context.
展开▼
