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Relations and Reflections to the Eye and Understanding: Architectural Models and the Rebuilding of the Royal Exchange, 1839–44
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 November 2017
Abstract
Historians have overlooked the ways in which architects perceived and used models during the nineteenth century. Drawing on a wide range of documentary sources, as well as drawings, prints and a surviving model, this essay examines how architectural models were deployed in the competition for the Royal Exchange and its design and construction (1839–44). Many figures saw models as important arbiters in choosing designs and, after the initial competition process, C.R. Cockerell and William Tite demonstrated the use of models as poetic and rhetoric tools in architectural practice. Drawing especially on the example of Tite's model of the Royal Exchange portico, which survives at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the essay discusses how architectural models played an important role in the social activities surrounding the profession including ceremonial events, conversazioni and international exhibitions.
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- Copyright © The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2017
References
NOTES
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28 For a rough plan of the exhibition and Gwilt's initial comments see LMA, CLC/521/MS04952, ‘Gwilt Papers’, 11 September 1839, ff. 11r–12v.
29 LMA, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 5 November 1839.
30 LMA, ’ Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 14 November 1839.
31 BAL, CoC/1/31: C.R. Cockerell Royal Academy lecture notes, 20 January 1848, ff. iv–v.
32 LMA, CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 5 November 1839.
33 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 3 February 1840.
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35 LMA, CLA/062/04/019, Royal Exchange: Extracts and Reports, ‘Proceedings’, minute of a meeting held on 11 February 1840.
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38 LMA, CLC/521/MS04952, ‘Gwilt Papers’, undated, f. 27r.
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40 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840. Letter from C.R. Cockerell to the Joint Gresham Committee.
41 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840. Letter from William Tite to the Joint Gresham Committee.
42 MC, GC, minute of meeting held on 28 April 1840.
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85 This author is in the process of compiling a bibliographic index of architectural model-makers active between 1830 and 1920.
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87 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.
88 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.
89 Ibid., minute of meeting held on 16 October 1840.
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109 From 1831 to 1847 there were fifty-three architectural models exhibited at the Royal Academy. Then between 1848 and 1894 there were only four models exhibited: two in 1853, one in 1862 and another in 1866.
110 Flour, ‘On the Formation of a National Museum of Architecture’, pp. 229–34.
111 At present this author is working on a history of architectural models and their exhibition in nineteenth-century Britain.
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