Category: Art & Architecture
A Regency Bicentennial: The Day Henry Bone Broke the Bank
A Regency Bicentennial cross-post from The Regency Redingote, originally published in April 2011:
For Henry Bone, 15 April 1811 was a red letter day. But for the bank of Marsh, Sibbald, Stracey & Fauntleroy, it was a black day indeed. Over £2,000 shifted from one end of Berners Street to the other that day, and very nearly shuttered the bank forever. It is possible the events of this day also led one of the bank’s officers into a life of clandestine crime which, when it was exposed, would ultimately end with his execution.
How an artist from Cornwall rocked the foundations of a London bank, two hundred years ago, today.
Temple of Diana By Angelyn Schmid
Today, Angelyn Schmid, author of Notorious Match, discusses garden rotundas similar to the Temple of Diana, which is situated on the grounds of the fictional estate in her story. Regency gardens are always such wonderful settings for romantic encounters between the hero and heroine. Angelyn explains how these gardens were laid out and enjoyed by those lucky enough to have access to such "natural" beauty.
Claude Glasses and Mirrors
A cross-post from The Regency Redingote:
At leisure, then, I viewed, from day to day,
The spectacles within doors, — birds and beasts
Of every nature, and strange plants convened
From every clime; and, next, those sights that ape
The absolute presence of reality,
Expressing, as in mirror, sea and land,
And what earth is, and what she has to show.
William Wordsworth
The Prelude
1805 — Book 7, Lines 245 -251
The "mirror" to which Wordsworth refers was the Claude mirror, an optical device used by many artists and devotees of the picturesque during the Romantic period, which includes the decade of the Regency.
Wordsworth did not approve of the use of either the Claude mirror or the Claude glass, both of which rendered views of the natural world in a manner he considered unnatural. But both of these devices had been popular in the later part of the eighteenth century and continued to be so in the first decades of the nineteenth century.
So just what are Claude glasses and mirrors?
The Golden Glory of the Amber Room During the Regency
A cross-post from The Regency Redingote:
For nearly two and a half centuries, the stunning achievement of the Amber Room stood as one of the world’s most exquisite works of art. Conceived and originally constructed in Prussia, it was soon thereafter presented to one of the most enlightened and forward-thinking of the Russian Tsars. There it was expanded and enhanced by his successors until it ranked as one of the wonders of the world and a powerful symbol of the glory of Mother Russia. It reached the apotheosis of its design and ornamentation scant decades before the Regency, and was famous across the Continent, indeed, the world, as a treasure beyond price. It survived Bonaparte and his invasion of Russia, yet like the Royal Hanoverian Creams, what Napoleon could not destroy, the Nazis ultimately did. But during the Regency, visitors to Russia with entrée into royal circles would have had the opportunity to behold this magnificent masterpiece.
The Amber Room, from its conception to the Regency …
