Anyone who came to this page hoping for some shots of Liam Neeson looking menacing in a corduroy coat, please click here now. To anyone still reading, I thought Halloween was a...
History may be written by the victors, but the History of Design is written by the victors with the most stuff. Since we’re dependent on material sources– drawings,...
Kent’s success depended hugely on personal relationships. The most important and enduring of these was with Richard Boyle, Lord Burlington, who was his friend, patron and...
Under normal circumstances I’d have been only too happy to celebrate the Budget with an infinitesimally cheaper pint and bargain game of bingo, but Wednesday was also an...
I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but the curators of William Kent have a lot of extra help when it comes to getting the exhibition up and running. These helpers are...
If any proof were needed about the evocative power of music then I’d be hard pressed to think of a better example than Handel’s Zadok the Priest. Is it possible to...
There’s a lot of designing going on in William Kent. The exhibition subtitle is ‘Designing Georgian Britain’, the title of this blog is ‘Designing William...
After months of anticipation, the V&A has finally gone public with William Kent. We’re officially on the website, tickets are on sale, and posters adorn the (for now,...
When the latest addition to the British Royal family was named last year, most reliable sources on royal affairs associated Prince George’s name with two illustrious...
It’s been a good start to 2014 for William Kent. Not only did the New York Times publish a very favourable review of the exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center, the author...
As every bibliophile knows, the main problem with books is how quickly they take up space. It starts off harmlessly enough, and then before you know it a casual second-hand...
The title of today’s post comes from a conference discussion with the textile artist Elaine Reichek, who I saw speaking recently at a two day event devoted to the...
I never though I would spend a morning running around the Museum looking for a dog, but it transpires that you can never quite predict the day’s task when it comes to...
This morning a very nice group of jewellery design students came to look at some of the many jewellery designs in the V&A’s collection. Inspiring the creative industries...
Some of the most significant power struggles in an exhibition surround label writing. These struggles are not, I hasten to add, between members of staff– we’re yet to...
Since Pearls are having a bit of a ‘moment’, it seemed a good time to search through the Designs collection for some interesting examples of jewellery design across...
Both the greatest opportunities and the greatest challenges that the William Kent exhibition presents are in recreating within a museum setting a sense of Kent’s designs for...
I don’t know about you, but I was very relieved to read that Dick van Dyke escaped unscathed from the jaws of death last week. Having spent my childhood learning about Women’s...
Last weekend I took something of a busman’s holiday and trundled along the District line to Chiswick House. Chiswick brings together two important figures in William...
Academic theory, as someone* once said, is very much like underwear: it provides essential structural support at all times but should remain unseen, apart from the occasional...
Today is the one year anniversary of the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Summer Olympics, and to mark the occasion Thomas Heatherwick’s cauldron model has been installed on...
Design is all about the interplay between the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional, as ideas that start life on paper are translated into the objects that they predict. In the...
If there was one thing that that William Kent was good at, it was gold. Actually he was good at many things, but he approached gilding with a taste or ‘gusto’ that, quite...
In a previous post I wrote about design as a process of collaborative evolution, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the creation of a large exhibition like William Kent....
Recently I have been to an interesting series of Social Design Talks. These discussions are based on the idea that designers employ unique working practices that can be adapted...
In March 2014 the V&A will host a major exhibition dedicated to the work of William Kent, the most prominent artist, designer and architect of the early Hanoverian period....
