Restoration Stories: Patina and Paint in Old London Houses

by Philippa Stockley

The soft shine of wooden boards, worn and gappy. The molten luster of mahogany or worn silver; the curiosity of tricorn hat boxes or a fragment of Spitalfields silk; portraits whose owners might once have lived here. Would they have believed that these houses would stand 250 years later? Time has imbued all these things with unforgettable patina--not only in museums, but even more in old Georgian houses still lived in and loved. The majority of these extraordinary dwellings began as ordinary terrace houses, built to a pattern, often in pairs or small groups. Clusters exist in the East End of London: in Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Shadwell, Mile End. They are mostly Grade II-listed, and their owners put up with the bone-curdling cold of winter howling through gaps, with mending and color-matching, patching and piecing. And among them are some unrepentantly furnished with 20th- and 21st-century modern, finding poetic harmony across the centuries.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1910258415
• ISBN13: 9781910258415
• Release Date: October 2019
• Publisher: Pimpernel Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.9" x 11.1"