Miscelanea Structura Curiosa (2005)
William Laffan (ed.)
With contributions from Toby Barnard, Christine Casey and Peter Harbison
Preserved in an album in Birr Castle for two hundred and fifty years, the fantastical and bizarre world of Samuel Chearnley is revealed in this the first edition of Miscelanea Structura Curiosa. In October 1745 Chearnley, together with his patron and collaborator, Sir Laurence Parsons, embarked on a project of paper architecture, producing over eighty drawings for grottoes, obelisks, pyramids, fountains and triumphal arches. Chearnley died at the age of twenty nine, shortly after dating the last of the drawings, his treatise was not published and none of the designs in the album were built.
The present volume publishes these remarkable images in their entirety for the first time. They demonstrate a truly unique vision, with perhaps the earliest appearance of surrealism in Irish art. The drawings are full of a very Irish wit and sprezzatura. Their vomiting and urinating fountains, grotesque masks and imagery associated with the initiation rites of the Hell Fire Club, are clearly intended to parody contemporary Anglo-Irish pieties. Chearnley, freed from the constraints of bricks and mortar, allows his imagination to soar to heights of architectural fantasy unparalleled in Ireland in the eighteenth century.
The book is a major contribution to Irish architectural studies. It contains essays in which the drawings are explored from architectural, artistic and iconological viewpoints. The social and family backgrounds of Chearnley and Parsons, Chearnley’s impact on the built environment of Birr and his relationship with contemporary Irish garden design are also discussed.
Product details
Pages: 180
Illustrations: 101
Price: €85 hardback
ISBN: 0-9550246-0-9
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Reviews
Katherine Swift, Hortus
"A fascinating and poignant tale. As well as William Laffan’s excellent introduction, the present volume also contains a detailed study of Chearnley’s sources by Christine Casey, a summary of what is known about Chearnley and his milieu by T.C. Barnard, and a chronological catalogue of the works of his better known brother Anthony Chearnley by Peter Harbison. The volume is beautifully produced in large format…"
Judith Hill, Irish Arts Review
"This is a remarkable and satisfying publication not only for the…insight it gives into the practice of mid-eighteenth century Irish architecture, but for the scholarship that has been brought to bear on the subject. The book draws on the extensive research and insightful understanding of [the authors] who also demonstrate how traditional interest in style and sources can be integrated with newer concerns for the intellectual, material and political context."
Frank Callanan, Irish Times
"A Delight."
The Knight of Glin
"A triumph of scholarship and detective work…Churchill House Press is to be congratulated for making available the remarkably exotic world of Samuel Chearnley. This is one of the most important contributions to Irish architectural studies in recent years."
