RECENT PAST EVENTS

SOLD OUT CLASSICISM IN COLOR: THE COUNTRY HOUSES OF ROBERT ADAM by EILEEN HARRIS Monday, 31 March 2008, 6:00pm  - BOOK SIGNING at The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street and presented by the ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION with co-sponsors YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART and SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM FOUNDATION

Robert Adam is the only architect whose name appears in the "Oxford English Dictionary" to define a distinctive style, not only of architecture, but also of furniture and interior design. Eileen Harris, the leading authority on Robert Adams's interiors, will speak about the Scottish architect and designer’s masterpieces, including his great country houses and glamorous London town houses. She will illustrate the development of his style of domestic architecture and decoration and focus on color in his interiors, furniture, and fittings. She will feature examples of his early work, such as Syon in London, Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire, as well has his later work at Kenwood House in London, Osterely Park in Middlesex,Saltram in Devon, and Culzean Castle, Ayrshire, among others. She will also discuss Headfort, County Meath outside Dublin with its exceptional and colorful suite of five rooms designed by Adam in the 1770s — the remaining example of Adam's work in Ireland and now on the World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites.

DR. EILEEN HARRIS (Barnard College; Columbia University) is an independent architectural historian and author of several books on the work of Robert Adam including The Genius of Robert Adam: His Interiors, and most recently The Country House of Robert Adam: From the Archives of Country Life (2007). She is also the author of British Architectural Books before 1780 (1997).  She is Honorary Librarian and Consultant to the Adam Project at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.

Reservations are required

Country Life Article

SOLD OUT MALPLAQUET HOUSE: THE RESCUE OF AN OLD LONDON MANSION by TIM KNOX Monday, 21 April 2008, 6:00pm at The Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street and presented by the ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION with co-sponsors SIR JOHN SOANE’S MUSEUM FOUNDATION

Tim Knox, Director of the Sir John Soane Museum, London and his partner, landscape historian Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, live in Malplaquet House in London, a 1740 four-story town house with 20-plus rooms originally built for a wealthy merchant. During the 19th century, the old mansion fell into disrepair, was badly damaged in the Blitz, and was abandoned —serving as the premises of an auto repair shop and a metal foil manufacturer. In 1998, Knox and Longstaffe-Gowan bought the dilapidated property and transformed it into a house of wonder, full of quirky collections that range from a rare double portrait by Sir Anthony Van Dyck, a death mask of Napoleon, and a tile from Beijing’s summer palace, to portraits of nuns, a sedan chair, and massed architectural models. Displayed against a backdrop of original 18th century painted paneling, cabinets groan with shells and natural curiosities, while marble busts peer out from every corner. Mr. Knox will tell of the dramatic rescue and revitalization of Malplaquet House, which now serves as a setting for this modern-day ‘cabinet of curiosities’.

TIM KNOX (Courtauld Institute, University of London) is the Director of Sir John Soane's Museum at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London, an appointment he received in 2005. Born in Africa, and brought up in Nigeria and Fiji, he studied history of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art of the University of London. He later became Assistant Curator at the Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection and in 1995 joined the National Trust as its Architectural Historian. He was appointed Head Curator of the National Trust in 2002. He was one of the major champions for the Trust's acquisition of Tyntesfield, near Bristol, and was involved in such diverse NT projects as the restoration of Stowe Landscape Gardens, and the acquisition of The Workhouse in Nottinghamshire. He is a Trustee of Stowe House, of the Pilgrim Trust, and of Prehen, his ancestral home in Co. Londonderry, as well as a member of the Advisory Committee for the Palace of Versailles. He regularly writes and lectures on art, architecture and the history of collecting.