Are you Pinterested?

Craig Hanson, who writes the Enfilade blog, recently posted on the Pinterest phenomenon, the online image pinboard service that is growing fast at the moment. Craig notes how images from museum websites are increasingly being ‘pinned’ and how this is helping to increase the public awareness of museum and heritage collections.

An often-pinned image: view into the Green Closet at Ham House. ©National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

I had noticed something similar with images from this blog appearing on Pinterest. I find it fascinating to see which images (and, theferore, objects and places) are particularly popular – some get pinned and repinned numerous times.

There seems to be real mutual benefit in this: it helps museums and heritage institutions to understand what their audiences are interested in, and it helps individuals to find inspiring images and learn more about those objects and places.

Another current Pinterest favourite: Virginia Woolf’s bedroom at Monk’s House. ©National Trust Images/Eric Crichton

Some museums have responded by creating their own Pinterest boards, for instance the Metropolitan Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the British Museum. The National Trust also has an official Pinterest presence, put together by our web team and including some ‘prosumer’ content. It illustrates our multi-focused identity as a membership organisation, a nature conservation body as well as a museum authority.

One of the National Trust’s Pinterest boards, featuring images taken of Trust places by members and visitors.

My colleague Alex Hunt, who monitors external trends that might affect the National Trust, sent me a link to this post by We Are Social which analyses the profile of the American users of Pinterest: the majority of them is female and has design/art-related occupations and interests. 

National Trust images that combine colour, texture and historical atmoshpere tend to be favourites on Pinterest, such as this view from the Top Terrace at Powis Castle. ©National Trust Images/Andrew Butler

According to We Are Social’s research, UK Pinterest users tend to have a slightly different profile (and there are far fewer of them), but both groups seem to have a high proportion of what marketing people call ‘influencers’, those whose activities and tastes are followed and imitated by others. A while ago I did some posts about influence and influencers, open-source art history and liquid networks.

Snapshot from Courtney Barnes’s tumblr page.

Fellow blogger Courtney Barnes, a classic cultural influencer, has recently started a visual diary on tumblr (which is similar in some ways to Pinterest), to record the discoveries that cannot immediately be accomodated on her main blog Style Court. It is a miniature (but growing) encyclopaedia of one person’s taste, an evolving mood board and a treasure trove of visual juxtapositions.

Another popular image from Treasure Hunt: Ellen Terry’s beetle dress for her role as Lady Macbeth, at Smallhythe. ©Zenzie Tinker

It is impossible to predict how the use of Pinterest will develop (I should perhaps revisit this in a year’s time), but at the moment it provides a wonderfully magnified view of the inner workings of cultural exchange, inspiration and networking.

Place and non-place

Dovecote at Chastleton House, Oxfordshire. ©Emile de Bruijn

I have just returned from a fascinating conference at the University of Northampton about ‘consuming the country house’, which I mentioned earlier. ‘Consumption’ turned out to be a really useful theme to frame discussions about the social, economic, political and artistic aspects of country houses.

Detail in the garden at Great Chalfield Manor, Wiltshire. ©Emile de Bruijn

One of the speakers, Ruth Gill, who works for Historic Royal Palaces, mentioned a book by anthropologist Marc Augé entitled Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995). Augé analyses transient places like airports, stations and supermarkets in which myriad human transactions are processed but which do not encourage feelings of connection or belonging.

Door of the gazebo at Great Chalfield. ©Emile de Bruijn

Ruth warned against the dangers of historic houses becoming too much like non-places. Sometimes the measures taken to preserve the historic fabric of a place can have the unintended consequence of making the visitor feel that he or she does not belong there.

Vista at Hidcote Manor, Gloucestershire. ©Emile de Bruijn

We probably all know the feeling of being in a place that is objectively beautiful but feels somehow alien. Equally we can all remember those moments when a small detail in a painting, the smell of a tapestry or of polished wood, the proportion of a piece of furniture or a doorframe, an intellectual insight or a surprise vista in a landscape suddenly connected us to a place.

Detail in the garden at Hidcote. ©Emile de Bruijn

I agree with Ruth that enabling those moments of connection – between ourselves and the world, between the past and the present – is essentially what heritage is all about.

A taxonomy of guidebooks

85 of the National Trust’s best-selling guidebooks can now be purchased online through our website.

I use the guidebooks a lot in my work, to quickly check facts about certain houses, gardens, rooms and objects. Over time I have collected different editions of the same guidbook, and it is interesting to see how they have changed over the years.

The earliest National Trust guidebooks were small, sober affairs, as befitted the austere 1940s and 1950s, and for quite a long time the guidebooks kept that restrained look.

I can remember buying one at Clandon Park in the mid-1980s which was fairly substantial in size, but still had the self-consciously ‘tasteful’ green cover. Inside some of the pages contained text only – extraordinary by today’s standards – and the relatively sparse illustrations were mainly in black and white.

Even so, to me as a teenager just becoming aware of ‘heritage’ it was rather thrilling to have all this diverse information about a house, its garden, the people who lived there and the things they collected – a biography of a place, effectively - in one booklet.

In some cases I have managed to find the pre-NT guidebooks as well, published when the house in question was still privately owned, and which show different and understandably more personal approaches to presenting a family’s heritage. And in places where the ‘donor family’ has a lot of input, such as Waddesdon Manor, the guidebooks still have a distinctive identity.

Today the guidebooks are much more visually stimulating both outside and in, as they have to compete for attention with the plethora of other products on offer in the various National Trust shops. And in some places there is now more than one type of guidebook, to cater for the different needs and tastes of different visitor groups.

It is probably not too far-fetched to say that the guidebooks mirror the development of the National Trust as a whole, and reflect trends in our appreciation of the past more generally. Perhaps – and I say this only half in jest – the time has come for a proper sociological and art-historical study of the subject?

Update: It had slipped my mind that our guidebooks editor, Oliver Garnett, has published a fascinating article on country house guidebooks in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, on pp. 7-9 of the October 2010 issue of ABC Bulletin. Hopefully he will soon produce another article on the history of National Trust guidebooks.

Past imperfect

The Hall at Hanbury Hall before 1900. ©National Trust

The agronomist Louise Fresco recently posted  about the implications of adding traditional cuisine to UNESCO’s world heritage listings (she writes in Dutch, so apologies to English-only readers). She rightly warns against the assumption that traditional recipes are fixed, and that there is one particular dish that can be designated as the ‘official’ one. Cuisine, like any other form of heritage, is always subject to change, and that change doesn’t necessarily make it less authentic.

The Hall more recently. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

That post reminds me of historic interiors, which are also often read as definitive and fixed. Of course this impression is partly caused by the sincere efforts of the owners or curators, who have done their best to make all the elements fit together into a convincing whole, just as a chef tries to harmonise all the flavours on the plate.

The Hall at Hanbury Hall is a salutary example of how radically the look of an interior can change over a hundred year period. The top image shows the fabric of the Hall unchanged since the house was rebuilt in 1701, but resplendent with Victorian clutter. The bottom image shows an attempt to recreate an eighteenth-century look by the National Trust. Both images can justifiably be called either ‘true’ or ‘untrue’. Taken together they also tell us something about our constantly changing perception of the past.

A paradigm buffet at Uppark

The Little Parlour at Uppark. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

I have previously shown how the decoration of Uppark, West Sussex, was influenced by the Grand Tour of Sir Matthew Featherstonehaugh and his wife Sarah. However, there is a also a strong strand of chinoiserie in the house.

The 'chinoiserie-cum-Grand-Tour' cabinet in the Little Parlour. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

In the Little Parlour, for instance, there is an extraordinary English japanned cabinet which combines East Asian features with inset Italian pietra dura panels and ivory plaques brought back by Sir Matthew. Based on its similarity to certain designs by Mayhew and Ince and Chippendale it probably dates to the late 1750s.

Close view of the cabinet. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

There is also a mahogany breakfast table incorporating a chinoiserie fretwork cuboard in this room, from about 1765. The wallcovering would originally have been Chinese wallpaper depicting birds roosting among flowering branches.

As I have mentioned before, I always find it astonishing how easily various styles were combined in the mid-eighteenth century. There was clearly no need for a any paradigm shifts when you could have a paradigm buffet.

The top part of the pier-glass in the Little Drawing Room, with its Rococo chinoiserie detailing. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

The Little Drawing Room contains a giltwood pier-glass of about 1755 in chinoiserie Rococo style. It can be linked to a c. 1752 design by Matthias Lock.

The Little Drawing Room. ©NTPL/Nadia Mackenzie

The walls of this room were originally hung with gilded leather, and twelve ‘Black Chaires’ – possibly japanned – were also recorded here at that time. The English japanned cabinet dates from the late 1750s.

The commodes and pier glasses in the Red Drawing Room. ©NTPL/Geoffrey Frosh

In the Red Drawing Room, moreover, there is a pair of commodes attributed to Pierre Langlois, probably from the early 1760s, which incorporate panels of Chinese lacquer. The pier glasses above them, by contrast, do not have any East Asian influences, but it is fascinating how they nevertheless form a visual whole with the commodes.

Preconceptions

A typical Japanese garden depicted on a typical Japanese lunchbox? Lacquer bento box at Snowshill Manor, Gloucestershire. ©NTPL/Stuart Cox

The recent disastrous events in Japan have exposed some lingering preconceptions in the West. In covering the earthquake and its aftermath, western media have often reverted to stereotypes of the Japanese as being impassive, unfailingly courteous and always prioritizing the group over the individual.

An English conception of a Japanese garden? The Japanese Garden at Kingston Lacy, Dorset. ©NTPL/Mark Bolton

As Professors Ivo Smits and Kasia Cwiertka of Leiden University point out, these preconceptions go back to anthropological studies from the 1940s, when it was common to emphasize the ‘otherness’ of the Japanese. For those who read Dutch their comments can be found here.

A Japanese conception of an English garden? Hill Top, Cumbria. ©NTPL/Stephen Robson

Smits and Cwiertka remind us that Japan is one of the most modern societies on the planet and that the lifestyle of its inhabitants is very similar to our own. Furthermore, Japan is continuously changing, just like any other society, and we should take care not to judge it with outdated models.

A typical English interior? The Entrance Hall at Hill Top, Cumbria. ©NTPL/Geoffrey Frosh

The images of the British drinking tea out of bone china teacups, wearing bowler hats and carrying tightly furled umbellas similarly date from the first half of the twentieth century. To preserve and study the past is vitally important, of course, but at the same time we should not forget that we live in an ever-changing present.

Open-source art history

The inner workings of the water-powered flour mill on the Hardwick Hall estate, Derbyshire. ©NTPL/David Levenson

There is a lot of talk in technology and internet circles about ‘open-source’: software for which the source code is freely available so that users can develop it and create new products. But perhaps we should be applying the same collaborative philosophy to the field of art history as well.

Chinese porcelain ewer from the Ming period, with English silver-gilt mounts dated 1589, at Hardwick Hall. Photographed for the 1985 Treasure Houses of Britain exhibition held in Washington, DC. ©NTPL

Traditionally art history has been inherently elitist and exclusive, both socially and intellectually. Art tended to be commissioned by the upper classes. Connoisseurship was seen as a superior, refined skill and the products of art-historical scholarship were guarded almost as fiercely as the art itself.

The Armada chest at Packwood House, Warwickshire. ©NTPL/Andreas von Einsiedel

This attitude has been replicated in the realm of contemporary art, which is often wilfully obscure. Both contemporary artists and critics revel in using opaque language and theory, enhancing the cult of art as something only to be understood by the happy few.

The Orangery Terrace at Powis Castle, Powys. ©NTPL/Ian Shaw

On the one hand this is all perfectly understandable, of course: scarcity increases value and obscurity stimulates the imagination. On the other hand accessibility and intellectual openness can lead to unforseen benefits, as Steven Johnson has demonstrated in talking about ‘liquid networks’.

View from the Hall into the Library at Basildon Park, Berkshire. ©NTPL/Dennis Gilbert

One encouraging example of open-source art history is the willingness of the British Museum to allow the use of digital images of highlights from its collections for non-commercial purposes that benefit the public.

Volunteer with visitors at Osterley Park, London. ©NTPL/David Levenson

The National Trust is also becoming more open-source, both in the accessibility of its collections, the way it welcomes visitors and in its style of communication generally, but more needs to be done. In the next few months, for instance, we hope to make our collections database publicly accessible, so watch this space.

Liquid networks

A scene at Carlo's in Florence, an inn much frequented by British grand tourists. Painting by Thomas Patch, 1760. ©NTPL/Derrick E. Witty

I recently picked up the phrase ‘liquid networks’, which refers to environments where ‘ideas can have sex.’ The phrase was coined by Steven Johnson, who has recently published the book Where Good Ideas Come From. Johnson gives a short, entertaining talk about the subject here.

Print showing Lloyd's Coffee House, after George Woodward, 1798, at Calke Abbey. ©NTPL/John Hammond

If I understand it correctly, a liquid network is a structure or place in which people of different backgrounds can come together in a relaxed atmosphere and freely exchange ideas. One historical example of a liquid network is the emergence of the coffee house in north-western Europe in the seventeenth century: informal spaces where you could pick up the latest news and discuss politics, commerce or poetry fortified by a decent dose of caffeine. 

An angling party, possibly the Rashleigh family at Manabilly, by Edward Smith, mid-eighteenth-century, at Wimpole Hall. ©NTPL/Roy Fox

Liquid networks can also be used to describe the spread of artistic styles, which is usually very difficult to trace exactly. As people visited the houses and gardens of their acquaintances they would notice new fashions in interior decoration, see paintings by newly lionised artists, and discover new plants or the latest garden pavilion styles.

At the centre of a liquid network: Jemima, Marchioness Grey, by Allan Ramsay, at Wimpole Hall. ©NTPL/Roy Fox

An interesting documented example of such a liquid network can be found in the journals and letters of Jemima, Marchioness Grey (1722-1797) and her husband Philip, second Earl of Hardwicke (1720-1790).

Marchioness Grey's fellow networker: The Hon. Philip Yorke, later second Earl of Hardwicke, by Allan Ramsay, 1741, at Wimpole Hall. ©NTPL/Roy Fox

As Patrick Conner recounts in his Oriental Architecture in the West, Marchioness Grey was a keen and critical observer of the fashion for chinoiserie garden pavilions. She saw and described the pavilion at Studley Royal (in 1744 and 1755), the one at Wroxton Abbey (in 1748) and the one at Grove House, Old Windsor (before 1756).  

The Chinese House at Stowe illustrated in a guidebook of 1750, standing in its 'little dirty Piece of Water.'

When at Stowe in 1748 she inspected the Chinese House there, writing that it stood ‘in a little dirty Piece of Water’, but that otherwise it was ‘ the prettiest I have seen, & the Only One like the Drawings & Prints of their Houses.’

The Chinese House at Shugborough, with a chinoiserie boat moored in its boathouse beside it, in a watercolour by Moses Griffith of c. 1780 at Shugborough.

On several occasions she commented on the chinoiserie garden structures at Shugborough, noting ’a Chinese Boat, extremely pretty’, in 1748. Stylistic affinity was sometimes strengthened by family ties: Marchioness Grey’s sister-in-law, Lady Elizabeth Yorke, married Admiral Lord Anson, the brother of Thomas Anson, the owner of Shugborough.

All this inspiration finally came to fruition at Marchioness Grey’s own country house, Wrest Park, where she had a Chinese House constructed by 1761.