Wren's City Churches.

Bookseller Notes

An early, considered the first, flourish of Art Nouveau in England - and praised for this innovation by Nikolaus Pevsner as 'not without ancestors, but they are not to be found among the hallowed period styles' (Sources of Modern Architecture and Design, p. 26). These large paper copies with the full version of the title-page design, enclosed within a columned border that is lacking in the regular edition.Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo was an architect, whose Century Guild was founded in 1882 on principles established by the Arts and Crafts movement, and influenced by Morris and Ruskin, 'to render all branches of Art the sphere no longer of the tradesman but of the Artist'. Its tenets also inform Mackmurdo's essay here, which was provoked by the threat of destruction (a bill that had thankfully been removed), where he suggests that the 'monuments must, in fact, be their own guardians and self-advocates [...] they must be cared for and appreciated, solely on account of their own beauty or service'. His 63pp. essay is followed by a section of Notes on the Towers.The earlier bookplate belongs to Richard Milne-Redhead: a barrister and traveller, fellow of the Linnean Society; he collected plants and seeds to build an impressive garden at Holden Clough near Clitheroe.