Building Reputations: Architecture and the Artisan, 1750-1830 - Paperback

Taking a cue from revisionist scholarship on early modern vernacular architectures and their relationship to the classical canon, this book rehabilitates the reputations of a representative if misunderstood building typology - the eighteenth-century brick terraced house - and the artisan communities of bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers responsible for its design and construction. Opening with a cultural history of the building tradesman in terms of his reception within contemporary architectural discourse, chapters consider the design, decoration and marketing of the town house in the principal cities of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British Atlantic world. The book is essential reading for students and scholars of the history of architectural design and interior decoration specifically, and of eighteenth-century society and culture generally.

Back Jacket

Building reputations provides a new perspective on a well-known, but widely misunderstood, historic building typology: the eighteenth-century brick terraced (or row) house. Created for the upper tier of the social spectrum, these houses were largely designed and built by what is regarded as the lower tier of the architectural hierarchy, namely artisan bricklayers, carpenters, plasterers and related tradesmen.