CONTEXT 188 : JUNE 2026 9 The writer’s voice From ‘Adam and Carr’ by Ivan Hall, a paper for the 1992 Georgian Group Symposium ‘Adam in Context’ [The Adams brothers thought that] the Palladians had relied too heavily on the temple architecture of Antiquity whose massiveness of parts was essentially unsuited to the generality of modern domestic architecture. Moreover, the architects and decorative artists of High Renaissance 16th-century Italy had the advantage of seeing more of the decorative painting or stuccowork of Imperial Rome than was extant in the Adams’ own day. Fortunately for posterity, some at least of this decorative work had been recorded with varying degrees of accuracy, and published by P Arringhi, or by Pietro Santo Bartoli, whose numerous volumes were brought out at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries. Most notably, an edition was published in Paris in 1757 by the Comte de Caylus, most of whose plates were in full colour. Adam, in his preface, does not dwell too much on the fact that many of the motifs and 29 arrangements that he found the most useful for his purposes were derived from the earliest Christian catacombs of very late Imperial Rome. These catacomb ceilings had survived while those of Pompeii or Herculaneum had not. With few exceptions, the catacomb ceilings – whether painted or stuccoed – were either based upon groined vaults or shallowly domed ceilings, and two distinct patterns emerged in consequence. In the former, the panels or ornament were symmetrical about the groin line; in the latter, the panels were regularly concentric or radial. Where room height permitted and finance was forthcoming, Adam employed shallow segmental groin- or barrel-vaulting. He illustrated one splendid example, the third Drawing Room in Derby House, in The Works, together with others from Syon House, Middlesex, St James’ Square and Kenwood House, Middlesex. When the ceiling had to be flat, the groin lines can still be sensed by the survival of the diagonals and the way in which panels of ornament are turned through right angles in simulation of the vaulted form (as in the Etruscan Room at Derby House, at Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, or in a more complex form, the Long Gallery at Syon). A second group Adam called ‘Mosaic Ceilings’, essentially an overall pattern of repeated motifs inside a regular grid of squares, hexagons or octagons. In The Works he illustrates one for 20 St James’ Square, and another was intended for Burton Constable, Yorkshire. They are derived from the coffering patterns of the Basilica of Maxentius, but Roman paintings of similar character also exist. Typically, the Adam version has incomplete elements on the perimeter, an effective psychological device that allows the viewer to ‘complete’ the motif and, in so doing, to enlarge the apparent size of the room. In published form, one may cite Desgodetz’s plate of the coffered barrel vault of the Basilica of Maxentius, in Robert Adam’s Roman inspiration (opposite) The ceiling of the Gallery at Harewood House, Yorkshire, by Robert Adam (Photo: Daderot, Wikimedia) which some elements are cut down almost to nothing. A much more elaborate version of the system survives at Newby Hall, Yorkshire, in the former dining room, for there the major octagons flank an oval centrepiece. Four smaller square coffers set diagonally link either with the oval, or the two octagons, but their counterparts at the ends of the ceiling are cut down to less than half size. Because this would have too greatly curtailed the paterae that they enclose, these are scaled down even more. Finally, the longer side panels have their inner edges curved or straight, thus echoing the central shapes they frame. Nothing illustrates better Adam’s ingenuity in setting out a ceiling, whilst each main and subsidiary panel encloses ornament different from that of its neighbour. This is in accordance with another Adam tenet, that through alternating ornament – whether major or minor – the eye is constantly entertained, a detail overlooked by most of his many so-called imitators. Ivan Hall (1933–2026), who died in March, was a leading expert on Georgian architecture. He was the author of John Carr of York, Collected Essays; and co-author of Historic Beverley and Georgian Hull. He was a historic buildings officer at English Heritage in London and a teacher at schools of architecture, and he played a pivotal role in saving the historic centres of Hull and Beverley from demolition in the 1960s and 70s.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=