{"id":1922,"date":"2009-07-08T19:05:57","date_gmt":"2009-07-08T19:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=1922"},"modified":"2009-07-08T19:05:57","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T19:05:57","slug":"soho-house-and-gardens-in-birmingham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/soho-house-and-gardens-in-birmingham\/","title":{"rendered":"Soho House and Gardens in Birmingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"matthew_boulton_house_birmingham\"<\/a>Matthew Boulton was a notable\u00a0 industrialist, James Watt’s partner and the designer of his own ‘landscape garden’, between 1761 and 1809.\u00a0 It was a key period between the classicism of the eighteenth century and the eclecticism of the nineteenth century. Boulton took an interest in many of the arts and sciences of his time. His approach was summarized in verse:<\/p>\n


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Nor Knight, nor Price nor Burke sublime
\n I ape in landscape nor in Rhyme<\/em><\/p>\n


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These lines define Boulton’s garden horizons: he was influenced by the Brownian approach; he was not willing to adopt a fashionably picturesque approach; he had a fondness for follies and a fondness for flowers. But, judging from\u00a0 plans and paintings,\u00a0 he lacked design talent.\u00a0 The garden has been carefully and usefully researched by three authors [Phillada Ballard, Val Loggie, Shena Mason: A lost landscape – Matthew Boulton’s gardens at Soho<\/em> (Phillimore & Co, Chichester, 2009 ISBN978-1-86077-563-5)]. Their work is good but it is a pity they did not invite a fourth contributor: the book lacks the specialist perspective of a garden historian.\u00a0 It lacks a stylistic oversight of the period in which the garden was made.\u00a0 Brown died in 1783. Repton’s career began in 1788 and reached its first peak in 1794. Boulton’s work casts a fascinating light on the ‘gap’ between the famous designers – but the authors seem unaware of their subject’s wider significance. This will not matter to those with a broad kowledge of the period but it could limit the popularity of the book. Another source of regret, for me, is that the conjectural plans of Matthew Boulton’s garden in 1794 and 1809 are casual sketch plans. It they had been drawn with more care they would have been more useful.\u00a0 The book should have been a study in the early development of the picturesque. But I recommend the book to local historians and to specialist garden libraries.\u00a0 Boulton’s house has become a museum and the authors have undertaken a botanically interesting garden re-creation.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy jo-h<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew Boulton was a notable\u00a0 industrialist, James Watt’s partner and the designer of his own ‘landscape garden’, between 1761 and 1809.\u00a0 It was a key period between the classicism of the eighteenth century and the eclecticism of the nineteenth century. Boulton took an interest in many of the arts and sciences of his time. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}