Description

London Lost Interiors – Steven Brindle

This mammoth tome of a book draws on the archives of Historic England, with photographs taken between 1880 and 1950. The book is about design and decoration but it is also offers a glimpse into society as it changed through the period. It is also about the people who made those interiors and the clients who commissioned them.

About half of the houses represented in this book have disappeared completely, victims of the waves of redevelopment that have consumed London’s property stock and neighbourhoods. Even when the houses still stand it is rare for the interiors to remain as they were when they were photographed in these instances.

So, these records of the interiors are fascinating both as a snapshot of tastes in room decoration and also as a document of spaces that, as they are mostly private residences, will not be seen by the public. The houses that Historic England chose to document are, perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the grandest that stood in the capital, while there is a section devoted to the middle class home, it is scant.

The book is largely laid out chronologically, with the impact of modernism being felt in the final few properties.

Hardback. 416 pages.

Measurements:

25.5cm x 29.5cm x 3.5cm