Titanic II Return of a Legend.

Australian Tycoon who wants to build replica of the Titanic announces that he will unveil design plans at gala dinner in New York

-Mining magnate Clive Palmer hopes to launch Titanic II in 2016

-He will unveil plans at a gala dinner on board aircraft carrier USS Intrepid

-The menu will be the same as that served on the Titanic on the day it sank

-Design will retain the first, second and third-class divisions of the original

-First voyage will be from China where it will be built to Southampton

 By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

PUBLISHED: 15:01 GMT, 4 October 2012 /

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212878/Titanic-II-Clive-Palmer-launch-replica-ill-fated-liner.html

The Australian tycoon planning to build a replica of the Titanic says he will unveil designs for his new liner at a gala dinner in New York in December.

Flamboyant billionaire Clive Palmer originally announced plans to build 'Titanic II' - a cruise ship with the same dimensions as its ill-fated predecessor - in April this year.

He will hold a dinner on the retired aircraft carrier USS Intrepid, moored in New York, on December 4 when he will unveil the designs with the help of John F. Kennedy's daughter Caroline.

Among those attending will be the former US president's daughter, his sister Jean Kennedy Smith and New York Senator Ruth Hassell-Thompson along with leading US business leaders, Palmer said.

They will be treated to a dinner from the same menu as Titanic passengers on the day it sank on April 12, 1912. 'It will be a chance for the business community of the United States and indeed the world to see the wonderful progress that's been made on our Titanic II project,' Palmer said.

'Since we announced our plan in April we've had a huge amount of interest, particularly from people wanting to know how they can secure a booking for the maiden voyage, along with commercial sponsors.'

The first voyage remains set for 2016, with the boat due to sail from China, where it will be built, to Southampton in England ahead of her maiden passenger journey to New York.

The new ship will mirror its predecessor's dimensions -- measuring 270 metres long (885 feet), 53 metres high and weighing 40,000 tonnes.

It will have 840 rooms and nine decks and retain the first, second and third-class divisions of the original.

Palmer extended an invitation for James Cameron to sail on the ship, saying the Titanic director had complained there were no Titanic-related experiences left for him.

'Well James, this is something you can do,' he said.

Mr Palmer built a fortune on real estate on Australia's Gold Coast tourist strip before becoming a coal mining magnate. More than 1,300 passengers perished when the Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage on April 12, 1912. Earlier this year, a memorial cruise carrying relatives of Titanic victims among its 1,309 passengers, the same number as on the doomed ship – set sail from Southampton for the Titanic’s wreck site.

BRW magazine reported he was Australia's fifth-richest person last year with an estimated fortune of more than AUS$5billion (£3.2billion).

Mr Palmer said at an earlier press conference that previous attempts to build a Titanic replica failed because proponents failed to raise enough money and commission a shipyard.

The new nine-deck, 840-room ship will be constructed to the same dimensions as the Belfast-built White Star Liner - 270 metres long, 53 metres high and weighing 40,000 tonnes.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212878/Titanic-II-Clive-Palmer-launch-replica-ill-fated-liner.html#ixzz2M7T61EQb

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Clive Palmer first announced the project in a press conference on 30 April 2012, following the signature of a memorandum of understanding with state-owned Chinese shipyard CSC Jinling ten days before. On 19 June, it was announced that Finnish naval architecture firm Deltamarin had been commissioned to undertake the design of the ship, and on 17 July a preliminary general arrangement was published.

In October 2012, Blue Star Lines announced that Titanic expert Steve Hall had been appointed as Design Consultant and Historian for the project, and that Titanic interiors expert Daniel Klistorner had been appointed as Interior Design Consultant and Historian.[Hall and Klistorner had previously co-authored books such as Titanic: The Ship Magnificent and Titanic in Photographs, and will give a technical presentation at the unveiling of the designs in New York, as well as at the dinner in London.

Later that month, it was announced that an advisory board would be formed to provide "suggestions and recommendations to Blue Star Line to ensure the Titanic II appropriately and respectfully pays homage to Titanic, her crew and passengers." Terry Ismay, the great-great nephew of White Star Line chairman and Titanic survivor Joseph Ismay will be a member of the board, as well as Helen Benziger, great-granddaughter of Titanic survivor Margaret Brown.

The design for the Titanic II was unveiled at a private event aboard the USS Intrepid in New York City on 26 February 2013. There will also be a dinner held at the Natural History Museum in London on 2 March, which will be accompanied by a display of items salvaged from the Titanic, as well as in Southampton on 5 March.

A New Titanic on the Drawing Board, but Where’s the Captain?

By BETTINA WASSENER

Published: February 19, 2013 in The New York Times / http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/global/a-new-titanic-on-the-drawing-board-but-wheres-the-captain.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

MACAU — The gala was a grand affair: hundreds of well-dressed guests, lots of musical entertainment, a meal replicating the 11-course feast served to first-class passengers on the Titanic the night it sank and the promise of meeting the wealthy Australian who plans to rebuild not just the menu, but the entire ship.

Just one thing was missing Saturday at the event in Macau: the host, Clive Palmer, a self-made multimillionaire — multibillionaire by some reckonings — who is funding the venture. Mr. Palmer, a larger-than-life character who is as colorful as he is vocal, said he had been held up on other business in Australia.

For most entrepreneurs, a project of this sort — experts estimate the ship, to be constructed in the Chinese city of Nanjing, could cost more than $200 million — would be the focus of their travel and business plans.

Mr. Palmer, however, is a busy man.

“Yes, I was sorry to miss the event, but I got caught up in a meeting on another new project,” Mr. Palmer said by phone from Brisbane on Sunday, adding that the project had to do neither with mining, the cornerstone of his considerable wealth, nor with shipping, but something “completely new.”

Mr. Palmer’s business empire is all over the map. He owns five golf courses in Australia and three resorts, including one in Tahiti.

He has mining and other natural resource assets of the sort that form a large part of the Australian economy. Among them are a nickel refinery and large tracts of land containing coal and iron ore deposits in the states of Queensland and Western Australia.

Then there are the 150 racehorses, five corporate jets and more than 100 vintage cars, which he is planning to exhibit at one of his resorts later this year. Oh, and there is also a large and growing collection of dinosaur models, among them a life-size Tyrannosaurus rex that looms over one of his golf courses.

Despite that varied portfolio, the Titanic project has been greeted with raised eyebrows — in part because of Mr. Palmer’s overall image in Australia as a brash, eccentric entrepreneur.

“In a way, people don’t take him seriously,” said a mining analyst in Sydney, who declined to be identified because he does not formally analyze Mr. Palmer’s business dealings. “You have to discount much of what he says and does with many grains of salt.”

Underlining the split emotions over Mr. Palmer, the Australian National Trust last year added him to its list of National Living Treasures, which includes people like Nicole Kidman; Kylie Minogue; and Paul Keating, a former prime minister of Australia.

The decision brought a fair amount of uproar in Australia.

“There is a sort of grudging respect for him,” said Jason West, a former investment banker who is now an associate professor at Griffith University in Brisbane. “It is very hard to get a handle on him and his business empire,” Mr. West added, “but he has an eye for value — no doubt about it.”Mr. Palmer is also both outspoken and litigious. Political quarrels, for example, prompted him in November to quit the Liberal National Party, of which he had been a member for many years. And on the legal front, Mr. Palmer has begun legal proceedings against Citic Pacific, a Chinese company working to extract iron ore from one of his sites in Western Australia, over the timing of royalty payments due to him.

Mr. Palmer, 58, dropped out of law school and began his working life as a real estate agent.

Most of his wealth stems from the purchases of land that holds iron and coal, whose prices later soared, thanks largely to the ravenous appetite of China. Mr. Palmer’s acquisition of a nickel refinery from the mining giant BHP Billiton turned out to be similarly clever — or lucky — analysts say. Nickel prices climbed after the purchase and the refinery now turns a nice profit. Not all his plans materialize, however. A stock market listing of Resourcehouse, an entity grouping Mr. Palmer’s coal and iron ore assets, was planned in Hong Kong, but pulled in 2011. Meanwhile, the coal sites in Queensland, eastern Australia, require huge investments before coal can actually be mined and shipped.

“There are significant challenges to convert an empty paddock into an operating mine,” said Mr. West of Griffith University. As for the Titanic II, as Mr. Palmer has christened the ship, if all goes according to plan, it will take to the sea by 2016. It will be equipped with high-technology engines, modern conveniences like air-conditioning, 840 cabins and, of course, more lifeboats than the original.

In another big departure from the original — and one that reflects Mr. Palmer’s business ties with Chinese companies — the Titanic II will be built by CSC Jinling Shipyard, a Chinese state-owned company that is also building four bulk carriers for Mr. Palmer’s nickel business. A big reason to commission the Titanic II was to give his Chinese partner the chance to prove itself in the cruise-ship-building business, Mr. Palmer said. China, he said, holds a “dominant position in the cargo business, but they have less than 2 percent in passenger ships.”

The Titanic II, with its universal appeal, Mr. Palmer said, “could become a national showcase for China” and demonstrate that the country has the technical ability to build ships for that segment of the market.

Already, interest among potential passengers has been intense, though construction has not even started.

Blue Star Line, the company managing the Titanic II project, has received tens of thousands of inquiries, and half a dozen people from around the globe have offered to pay more than $1 million to be on the vessel’s maiden voyage, James McDonald, the marketing director, said at a news conference in Hong Kong on Saturday before the Macau gala.

Whether the ship will ever sail, let alone generate cash, remains to be seen.

“At my age, you don’t really worry that much about whether you make money or lose money on something,” Mr. Palmer said. “But I’m pretty convinced that it will be a financial bonanza.”

Kees Metselaar for the International Herald Tribune

A recorded message from Clive Palmer, the tycoon behind the Titanic II project, was played at a press conference in Hong Kong last week. Mr. Palmer also skipped a gala in Macau that was held to promote the project.

 Comparison with the original Titanic
The ship is being designed to be as similar in internal and external appearance to the Titanic as possible. However, modern safety regulations and economic considerations will dictate several major changes to the design, including:
Greater beam for enhanced stability
Welded, not riveted, hull[
 Reduced draught
Bulbous bow for higher fuel efficiency, although moderately sized compared to modern ships[
Stabilisers to reduce roll
Diesel engines driving azimuth thrusters to replace the original coal-fired steam engines
An additional 'safety deck' between C and D decks for modern lifeboats and marine evacuation systems, with the boat deck housing replicas of the original lifeboats. Space for the deck has been made by lowering decks D and below by 2.8 meters, and for the taller centre section of the safety deck, which houses the lifeboats, by raising the superstructure by 1.3 meters. In spite of the reduced draft, space has been made for the lowered decks by removing the orlop deck, which mainly housed the boilers.
New 'escape staircases' in addition to the original staircases, housed in the redundant boiler exhaust uptakes.
Viewing decks in the redundant first two funnels.
No sheer or camber,[ unlike the original. Pronounced sheer was a cosmetic feature of ocean liners, intended to add a graceful appearance to the ship, but made construction more difficult and therefore costly. Renderings released in February 2013 show an upwards rake added to C Deck at the bow and stern to give a superficial appearance of sheer, although an inauthentic wedge-shaped gap has had to be added between C and D decks in these areas to produce this effect.
A higher bridge, as the superstructure has been raised by 1.3 meters by the centre section of the safety deck, and also by the removal of the sheer. This negates the requirement on the original Titanic for lookouts.

 The steam engines and coal-fired boilers of the original Titanic have been replaced with a modern diesel-electric propulsion system. The space which housed the boilers will be used for crew quarters and ships systems. Power will be produced by four Wärtsilä 46F medium-speed four-stroke diesel generating sets; two twelve-cylinder 12V46F engines producing 14,400 kilowatts (19,300 hp) each, and two eight-cylinder 8L46F engines producing 9,600 kilowatts (12,900 hp) each, running on heavy fuel oil and marine gas oil.Propulsion will be by one fixed propeller and two azimuth thrusters which will also be used for manoeuvring, while the replica of the rudder of the Titanic is purely cosmetic, and will not extend substantially below the waterline.
_____________________________________________________________________

The interior of the ship is intended to be as similar as possible to the original. However, the original wooden panelling does not conform to modern fire regulations, so as in RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, veneers will have to be used. Plans show a layout broadly similar to the original, but with the third-class cabins modernised, and consideration being given to en-suite cabins throughout the ship. The room freed up by eliminating the steam boilers of the original ship will be used for crew quarters and various services.

If built, the Titanic II would represent the first major passenger vessel constructed in China, a country with much more experience of building cargo ships than cruise ships, and a significant investment would be required to ensure it meets the much more stringent safety requirements for passenger vessels.
The Chinese state-owned CSC Jinling shipyard has never built a large passenger vessel. In addition, it has no drydock, instead using side launching from a 200m slipway. The 269m Titanic II would be the largest side-launched vessel in history by a huge margin, and would require a significant extension to the shipyard's facilities.
Representatives from the shipyard have questioned whether the ship can be completed by 2016, and emphasize that no contract has yet been signed.
Clive Palmer has been described as an 'eccentric billionare' with a reputation for bizarre publicity stunts, such as the attempt to create a massive Jurassic Park style dinosaur theme park at his golf resort. It has also been noted that the publicity surrounding the Titanic II coincided with Palmer's announcement of his entry in to Australian federal politics, which was made immediately following the Titanic II conference.Palmer had previously claimed that he was the target of a conspiracy involving Barack Obama, the CIA, the Rockefeller Foundation and Greenpeace, who he believed were attempting to close down his mining operation. In 2010, Palmer started a company called Zeppelin International, with the intention of making a commercially viable Zeppelin.[After the plan came to nothing, it was ridiculed as the 'bizarre move of the year' by Australian business website Smartcompany.[ He has gained a reputation in Australia for floating ambitious and unusual business ideas which he fails to see through, and the Titanic II has been described as 'a classic Clive Palmer announcement'.

Titanic Replica Being Built By Australian Billionaire - Titanic 2

Goodyear welted‏ ...

A welt is a strip of leather, rubber, or plastic that is stitched to the upper and insole of a shoe, as an attach-point for the sole. The space enclosed by the welt is then filled with cork or some other filler material (usually either porous or perforated, for breathability), and the outsole is both cemented and stitched to the welt. This process of making shoes is referred to as Goodyear welt construction, as the machinery used for the process was invented in 1869 by Charles Goodyear, Jr. the son of Charles Goodyear. Shoes with other types of construction may also have welts for finished appearance, but they generally serve little or no structural purpose.
Welt is also the name of the upper part of a stocking. A fabric is knitted separately and machine-sewn to the top of the stocking. Knit in a heavier denier yarn and folded double, the welt gives strength for supporter fastening.
The Goodyear welt process is the traditional method for the manufacture of mens dress shoes, taking its name from the inventor who devised the original machine to replace the earlier completely hand sewn method. The benefit of a dress shoe which is made using the Goodyear welt construction is that the shoe can be resoled repeatedly, giving the shoe a lifespan of years, sometimes even decades. Some claims towards added ventilation have been made as well, but there are no proven studies comparing the breathability of different shoe construction methods. Most probably, the materials play the largest part in the ventilation issue.
Essentially, the upper part of the dress shoe is shaped over the last and fastened on by sewing a leather, linen or synthetic strip (also known as the "welt") to the inner and upper sole. As well as using a welt, a thread is used to hold the material firmly together.
The welt forms a cavity which is then filled with a cork material. The final part of the shoe is the sole which is attached to the welt of the shoe by some combination of stitching along the edge of the welt and sole, and a high strength adhesive like contact cement or hide glue. The Goodyear welt is highly regarded for a number of reasons including being relatively waterproof by not allowing water to get into the insole due to the welt-sole construction, the relative ease in which the sole can be replaced, and the fact that the shoe can last up to 20 years or longer depending on the treatment and condition of the upper.
The very nature of this shoe construction means that Goodyear welted dress shoes take much longer to manufacture than cheaper alternatives. Factories commonly hire scores of highly skilled operators to create dress shoes of comfort and durability. However, Goodyear welted construction is the chosen method for some highly reputable brands in the shoe industry, for example: Alden, Alfred Sargent, Allen Edmonds, Barker, Boulet Boots, Brooks Brothers, Caterpillar (CAT), Cheaney, Chippewa, Church, Crockett & Jones, Dr. Martens, Florsheim, George Cleverley (RTW), Grenson Ltd, Loake Shoes, Oliver Grey, Oliver Sweeney, Red Wing Boots, Timberland and Wolverine.

Santalum Video - Handmade goodyear welted construction

Terry Thomas - Heroes of Comedy Part 1

Terry Thomas Heroes of Comedy Part 2

Terry Thomas:Heroes of Comedy Part 3

Terry Thomas: Heroes of Comedy Part 4

Remembering ... Tim Walker: Storyteller, Somerset House, London

AT Sumerset House

Tim Walker: Story Teller

Supported by Mulberry

18 October 2012 - 27 January 2013

Daily 10.00-18.00
East Wing Galleries, East Wing
Free admission

http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/visual-arts/tim-walker-story-teller
Tim Walker is one of the most visually exciting and influential fashion photographers working today. Extravagant in scale and ambition and instantly recognisable for their eye-opening originality, Walker’s photographs dazzle with life, colour and humour. His recent work is drawn from the pages of the world’s leading magazines: British, French, American and Italian Vogue, Vanity Fair, W and The New Yorker among many others.
Walker’s photographs provided the focus of the exhibition, but the camera, he claims, ‘is simply a box put between you and what you want to capture’. Everything in Walker’s pictures is specially constructed and in a glimpse behind the mechanics, there were installations and a selection of the extraordinary props and models on show: giant grotesque dolls for Italian Vogue and an almost life-size replica of a doomed Spitfire fighter plane.
The photo shoot begins to resemble the film set: hair and make-up artists, fashion stylists and costume fitters, model makers, set designers, builders, producers and painters, prop suppliers and a cast of models playing out imagined roles. At the centre is Walker harnessing creative and technical talents to conjure up the harmonious whole in a singular picture.
 The exhibition was accompanied by a series of events that feature many of Tim Walker’s long-time collaborators and uncover the influences and stories behind his work. There were workshops for all ages offering visitors the opportunity to work with some of the set designers and prop builders who have worked with Tim Walker throughout his career and talks including Tim Walker in Conversation with Penny Martin. Throughout the exhibition there  was also the opportunity to see a series of films specially curated by Tim Walker. Made up of films that have inspired and influenced many of his images, these included cult movies such as La Belle at la Bete, The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death and Tim’s own first feature The Lost Explorer.
To coincide with the exhibition, Thames & Hudson published Story Teller by Tim Walker featuring over 175 inspirational images, collages and snapshots from Walker’s personal archives.
Mulberry continues their support of Tim Walker’s creativity through supporting Story Teller, the exhibition.

Tim Walker: Storyteller, Somerset House, London

 HANNAH DUGUID   MONDAY 22 OCTOBER 2012 in The Independent / http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/tim-walker-storyteller-somerset-house-london-8221716.html

A flying saucer chased by a foxhunt and tables laid for a party and suspended in trees are some of the fashion photographer Tim Walker's more extravagant gestures.

Along with a life-sized aeroplane made of French loaves, and a giant insect playing the cello. It’s a world where magic exists and, though darkness threatens, it is never ugly. Beauty rules here, because it is fashion, after all.

It’s a particularly British aesthetic, an Alice in Wonderland world, where edgier models such as Stella Tennant and Karen Elson lark in the grounds of country houses: a pink dress and roses could not make these girls twee. Like a fairy tale, Walker’s imagination can be creepy - a giant doll kicks a barbed wire fence on which a model is stuck - but it’s never frightening.

Not that all of Walker’s images are elaborate. Quintessentially British celebrities appear: Tilda Swinton wears flying goggles against a cool white background; Alexander McQueen’s only props are two cigarettes, one in his mouth and the other in the mouth of a skull on which he leans; Helena Bonham Carter is dressed as the Queen, sipping a can of coke. Walker’s portraits feel stark as compared to the excesses of his fashion spreads.

Walker has claimed that he’s not interested in taking pictures. He has no nerdy interest in light meters and gadgets, it’s simply about holding the camera up and, click, a perfect image. Like the Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz, his art lies in his extraordinary ability to create magical sets that capture the imagination, and show off beautiful clothes. His is a truly British arcadia, in which eccentricity is part of the fantasy, like the Mad Hatter’s tea party. He often references fairy tales, the cover image of his Storyteller book, which accompanies the exhibition, shows a model who has cracked Humpty Dumpty in two.

Walker learned his craft in the bowels of Vogue magazine, working on Cecil Beaton’s archive. He went on to assist Richard Avedon in New York. Even though his work is unmistakably contemporary there is nostalgia wthin it, for the leisured class and their rounds of tea parties, rose gardens and fox hunting. So, as the end approaches, why not drink champagne and have one last dance.

To 27 January 2014 (www.somersethouse.org.uk)

Mulberry presents Tim Walker in conversation with Penny Martin - Part One

Mulberry presents Tim Walker in conversation with Penny Martin - Part Two

Mulberry presents Tim Walker in conversation with Penny Martin - Part Three

Mulberry presents Tim Walker in conversation with Penny Martin - Part Four

BBC Four “Carved with love: the genius of british woodwork”.

 BBC Four “Carved with love: the genius of british woodwork”

Part 1: The Extraordinary Thomas Chippendale

We begin by exploring the life and work of one of the greatest designers of the 18th century, Thomas Chippendale. Chippendale is the most famous furniture designer the world has ever produced, but what about the man behind the chairs? The film shows how Chippendale worked his way up from humble roots to working for the nobility, but also how he was ruined by the very aristocrats he created such wonders for.

Part 2: The Glorious Grinling Gibbons

We continue by looking at the life and work of Grinling Gibbons. He isn't a household name, but he is the greatest the woodcarver the British Isles ever produced. Working in the aftermath of the Great Fire of London, Gibbons created delightful carved masterpieces for the likes of Charles II and William of Orange. This film explores the genius of the man they called the 'Michelangelo of wood'.

Part 3: The Divine Craft of Carpentry

Concluding episode looking at the Middle Ages, a golden era. Sponsored by the monarchy and the Church, carvers and carpenters created wonders that still astound us today, from the magnificent roof of Westminster Hall to the Coronation Chair, last used by Elizabeth II, but created 700 years ago. The film also shows how this precious legacy was nearly destroyed during the fires of the Reformation.

Credits

Series Producer
John Mullen
Narrator
Paul Copley
Director
Suniti Somaiya
Producer
Suniti Somaiya
Executive Producer
Jonty Claypole

Carved with Love: the Genius of British Woodwork - Chippendale expert John Bly.

Carved with Love: the Genius of British Woodwork, BBC Four, review
Sarah Rainey finds BBC Four documentary The Genius of British Woodwork surprisingly uplifting.
By Sarah Rainey10:02PM GMT 10 Jan 2013 in The Telegraph / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9794389/Carved-with-Love-the-Genius-of-British-Woodwork-BBC-Four-review.html

Carved with Love: the Genius of British Woodwork (BBC Four) was a jaunty little documentary about Thomas Chippendale, the great 18th-century woodcarver. Now, I don’t know much about woodwork (or at least I didn’t this time yesterday), but this lured me in by nicking the theme tune from The Great British Bake Off.
Sixty minutes of close-ups of chairs, and commodes later, I was hooked.
The show, the first in a four-part series looking at British craftsmanship over the ages, took in Chippendale’s career from his days as a carpenter in Yorkshire to his grand international catalogue, which inspired décor in the homes of George Washington and Catherine the Great. Beautifully filmed inside some of Britain’s most opulent stately homes, it was curiously gripping, with actor Paul Copley’s brilliant, booming voice-over making even a wooden chest sound interesting.
There were facts galore about Chippendale, known as the “High Priest of Mahogany”, insights into long-forgotten techniques (japanning, anyone?) and scenic vistas of the Yorkshire Dales – all of which made for cheery, easy viewing.

It was clearly the first time some of the experts – such as Antiques Roadshow’s John Bly, nearly bursting out of his pinstripe suit as he fondled a chair – had been out of the house for months; and the exquisite furniture seemed to get them flustered. “In some ways it’s a sensual relationship, all these wonderful curves, and I have the pleasure of touching it and stroking it,” said one curator of her favourite cabinet. “It’s seen a lot of action, this desk,” said another.
Admittedy it was slightly dull in places – a bit like a tour of a dusty old museum. But at best, it was weird, wonderful, furniture porn.

Chippendale was the only child of John Chippendale (1690–1768), joiner, and his first wife Mary (née Drake) (1693–1729). He received an elementary education at Prince Henry's Grammar School. The Chippendale family had long been the wood working trades and so he probably received his basic training from his father, though it is believed that he also was trained by Richard Wood in York, before he moved to London. Wood later ordered eight copies of the Director. On 19 May 1748 he married Catherine Redshaw at St George's Chapel, Mayfair and they had five boys and four girls.
In 1749 Chippendale rented a modest house in Conduit Court, near Covent Garden. In 1752 he moved to Somerset Court, off the Strand. In 1754 Chippendale moved to 60–62 St. Martin's Lane in London, where for the next 60 years the family business operated until 1813 when his son, Thomas Chippendale (Junior), was evicted for bankruptcy. In 1754 he also went into partnership with James Rannie, a wealthy Scottish merchant, who put money into the business at the same time as Chippendale brought out the first edition of the Director. Rannie and his bookkeeper, Thomas Haig, probably looked after the finances of the business. His wife, Catherine, died in 1772. After James Rannie died in 1766, Thomas Haig seems to have borrowed £2,000 from Rannie's widow, which he used to become Chippendale’s partner. One of Rannie's executors, Henry Ferguson, became a third partner and so the business became Chippendale, Haig and Co. Thomas Chippendale (Junior) took over the business in 1776 allowing his father to retire. He moved to what was then called Lob's Fields (now known as Derry Street) in Kensington. Chippendale married Elizabeth Davis at Fulham Parish Church on 5 August 1777. He fathered three more children. In 1779 Chippendale moved to Hoxton where he died of tuberculosis and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 16 November 1779.
There is a statue and memorial plaque dedicated to Chippendale outside the old Prince Henry's Grammar School in Manor Square, in his home town of Otley, near Leeds, Yorkshire. There is a full-size sculpted figure of Thomas Chippendale on the façade of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

After working as a journeyman cabinet maker in London, in 1754, he became the first cabinet-maker to publish a book of his designs, titled The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director. Three editions were published, the first in 1754, followed by a virtual reprint in 1755, and finally a revised and enlarged edition in 1762, by which time Chippendale's illustrated designs began to show signs of Neoclassicism.

Chippendale was much more than just a cabinet maker, he was an interior designer who advised on soft furnishings and even the colour a room should be painted. Chippendale often took on large-scale commissions from aristocratic clients. Twenty-six of these commissions have been identified. Here furniture by Chippendale can still be identified, The locations include:

Blair Castle, Perthshire, for the Duke of Atholl (1758);

Wilton House, for Henry, 10th Earl of Pembroke (c 1759-1773);

Nostell Priory, Yorkshire, for Sir Roland Winn, Bt (1766–85);

Mersham Le Hatch, Kent, for Sir Edward Knatchbull, Bt (1767–79);

David Garrick both in town and at his villa at Hampton, Middlesex;

Normanton Hall, Rutland and other houses for Sir Gilbert Heathcote Bt (1768–78) that included the management of a funeral for Lady Bridget Heathcote, 1772;

Harewood House, Yorkshire, for Edwin Lascelles (1767–78);

Newby Hall, Yorkshire, for William Weddell (c 1772-76);

Temple Newsam, Yorkshire, for Lord Irwin (1774);

Paxton House, Berwickshire, Scotland, for Ninian Home (1774–91);

Burton Constable Hall, Yorkshire for William Constable (1768–79);

Petworth House, Sussex and other houses for George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont (1777–79).

Dumfries House, Ayrshire, Scotland, for the 5th Earl Of Dumfries. 

Chippendale collaborated in furnishing interiors designed by Robert Adam and at Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire, and Melbourne House, London, for Lord Melbourne, with Sir William Chambers (c. 1772-75).

Chippendale's Director was used by many other cabinet makers. Consequently recognisably "Chippendale" furniture was produced in Dublin, Philadelphia, Lisbon, Copenhagen and Hamburg. Catherine the Great and Louis XVI both possessed copies of the Director in its French edition.The Director shows four main styles: English with deep carving, elaborate French rococo in the style of Louis XV furniture, Chinese style with latticework and lacquer, and Gothic with pointed arches, quatrefoils and fret-worked legs. His favourite wood was mahogany; in seat furniture he always used solid wood rather than veneers.

the life and work of thomas chippendale, gilbert christopher

Obituary: Christopher Gilbert

BERNARD D. COTTON   TUESDAY 20 OCTOBER 1998 in The Independent / http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-christopher-gilbert-1179411.html

WHEN CHRISTOPHER Gilbert joined Temple Newsam, Leeds, in the early 1960s as an Assistant Keeper, few would have guessed that he was about to embark on a scholarly career that would place him as the undisputed elder statesman of British furniture history, almost 40 years later.

Born in Lancaster in 1936, he was educated at the universities of Keele, where he read English and History, and Durham, where he was awarded an MA for a thesis on aspects of 16th-century theatre. He spent all of his working life at Temple Newsam, a large country house on the outskirts of Leeds owned by the city council, becoming its Keeper from 1967 to 1974. He remained based at Temple Newsam after he was appointed Director of Leeds City Art Galleries in 1982, a post he held until 1995 when ill-health forced his early retirement.

It was here that his lifelong passion for historic furniture was fostered in his principal work of researching the furniture collections. His two- volume catalogue of the furniture at both Temple Newsam and Lotherton Hall (a smaller Edwardian house also owned by Leeds City Council) acts as a model for the concise and relevant description of furniture. His love of the English language, and his ability to use it in precise and illuminating ways, is reflected in his often-quoted motto, to "write as if one is paying the publisher to print each word!"

For those interested in the classic 18th-century furniture traditions, however, it will be his towering two-volume The Life and Work of Thomas Chippendale (1978) for which he will be remembered. It brims with the social history of Chippendale's time as well as providing details of provenanced furniture.

In this work he demonstrated, in a way hardly paralleled before, that contemporary writing on furniture history could move away from subjective, speculative accounts to those underpinned by the scholarly rigour and documentary evidence expected of an academic discipline. It is a great sadness that the last great project he had embarked upon, the life and work of Thomas Chippendale the Younger, will not now follow from his pen.

At the Chippendale Society, in his roles as Honorary Curator and later President, Gilbert was responsible for raising large sums of money, and orchestrating important acquisitions of provenanced Chippendale furniture and related documentation.

His recognition of the pre- eminence of achieving provenance for furniture led him to undertake, with his friend and co-editor, Geoffrey Beard, and a large team of volunteers, the Herculean task of collecting biographical information from a variety of sources, culminating in The Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660-1840 (1986). This work offers the first comprehensive source of maker information, and provides an accessible research tool for those who collect or work with furniture.

With the help of his vast network of contacts amongst museums, auction houses, private owners, and particularly members of the antiques trade, Gilbert more recently followed the dictionary with an illustrated volume of provenanced metropolitan furniture, The Pictorial Dictionary of Marked London Furniture 1700-1840 (1996). In 1993, with Tessa Murdoch of the Victoria and Albert Museum, he organised an exhibition held at Temple Newsam and the V&A, on John Channon and brass-inlaid furniture 1730-1760.

Although always ambitious and pioneering in his own work, he was, too, generous towards others, and particularly young scholars, and typically responded with lightning speed to questions and observations. In this way, he stood at the crossroads of new information from many sources, a gift he was always prepared to acknowledge.

His interest in developing furniture history as an academic discipline was reflected in his immediate response to the formation of the Furniture History Society in 1964. He joined its council almost from the outset, became its journal editor from 1975 to 1983, and later its Chairman in 1990. He was also elected as a Fellow of the Museums Association and the Society of Antiquaries.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Gilbert stood almost alone amongst his contemporaries in being deeply aware that the concerns of furniture history were often narrowly directed towards the furniture made for the fashionable homes of the wealthy, and that, important though these traditions were, concentrating research and publishing in these areas served to deny a voice and recognition to the greater volume of British furniture made for working people's houses during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the oak furniture traditions of the 17th century and earlier.

Quietly he began to explore and redress the imbalance, by publishing authors in the FHS Journal who were working in this field, as well as his own work. Significantly, perhaps, his first major paper, "Regional Furniture Traditions in English Vernacular Furniture", was published in America, as a Winterthur Museum Conference report, in 1974. This paper, although hardly known in Britain, found an already well-versed audience in the US, and it remains a model of methodological excellence.

Coincidentally, he began to produce a series of exhibitions and exhibition catalogues which were intended to show different aspects of this as yet to be accepted area of furniture history. Beginning with an exhibition of oak furniture from Yorkshire churches (1971), followed by an exhibition of oak furniture from the Lancashire Lakeland region (1973), Gilbert explored in particular the methodology of comparing the motifs on fixed, architectural woodwork with those on moveable furniture, as a way of provenancing furniture to a region of origin. In this, and other work, which he published regularly over the ensuing years, Gilbert proved that furniture for the common purpose, vernacular furniture, was designed and made with local or regional design preferences.

Gilbert's work took yet other turns during the 1970s which evidenced his growing sense of this new field. His exhibition "Town and Country Furniture" (1972) took regional furniture out of the rural or "country furniture" category which commercial interests had cast for it, by showing that robust and well-defined furniture traditions existed in both rural and urban areas. The sub-text, as always, was to demonstrate that vernacular furniture can sometimes be provenanced to its maker, and at other times to its region of origin by its association with people, places, or other, provenanced items of furniture.

For the exhibition he gathered together an eclectic collection of furniture to demonstrate the range of items which could be recognised in these ways, including chairs, commodes, chests of drawers, linen presses, settees, and corner cupboards. Exactly a decade later, he organised "Common Furniture" (1982). This time, with the benefit of a further 10 years of collecting new information, the areas of attribution had grown and developed.

In the years between the two exhibitions, he showed how furniture was not the exclusive domain of the domestic, and that that made for institutions as diverse as asylums, prisons, army barracks, railway stations and workhouses all required specialisation which was certainly vernacular, and whose design was sometimes regional or context dependent.

His two exhibitions "Back Stairs Furniture from Country Houses" (1977) and "School Furniture" (1978) brought fresh evidence to the core belief that furniture studies led by social-historical perspectives provide a meaning and significance for furniture previously considered merely mundane. Essentially it is this view which Gilbert knew would sustain the development of vernacular furniture studies, and given the enormous potential for original research in this area, often following new and radical research methods of object analysis and fieldwork techniques, he believed that major advances in furniture history were to be gained.

His most recent, and largest, published work concerned with both regional and institutional furniture, English Vernacular Furniture 1750-1900 (1991), offers a summation of the many sub-groups of furniture and their social history which he had researched. As with many new and developing ideas, there is often an internal dynamic which generates interest in others, and so it was with Gilbert's work on regional furniture traditions, for, in 1985, the Regional Furniture Society was formed with the express purpose of stimulating interest in the regional furniture traditions, and to publish an annual journal of new research in the field.

Although some detractors at the time felt that this move might fragment the established order of publishing in furniture history, Gilbert believed that the scope of the field required a separate scholarly publication and the provision of special events for its members. Displaying his commitment, he served as the society's first journal editor from 1987 to 1992. A decade on, his belief in the field seems fully justified in the now considerable publishing record to its credit, with several dozen authors and researchers now regularly publishing.

Gilbert was always at the forefront of developments. It is perhaps a fitting epitaph that his most recent call to the colours was to become a trustee of the recently formed Regional Furniture Museum Trust at High Wycombe, which represents an initiative to form a museum and research centre for the study of British Regional Furniture.

Christopher Gilbert had a strong emotional attachment to the north of England, and gained great refreshment from staying at the (Spartan) family cottage in the Dales, where he could retreat to write, walk, and enjoy his twin interests of bird-watching and steam railways. His second wife, Mary, was, with her sense of humour and vivacious ways, a perfect foil for this earnest and scholarly man.

Christopher Gallard Gilbert, furniture historian and museum curator: born Lancaster 7 September 1936; Assistant Keeper, Temple Newsam House 1961-67, Keeper 1967-74; Principal Keeper, Leeds City Art Galleries 1974- 82, Director 1982-95; twice married (two daughters; three stepsons, one stepdaughter); died Leeds 29 September 1998.

Grinling Gibbons

BY DAVID ROSS, EDITOR in http://www.britainexpress.com/History/gibbons.htm
The most famous English woodcarver of all time was born, oddly enough, not in England at all but in Rotterdam, in what is now Holland, in 1648. Grinling Gibbons did not set foot in the British Isles until sometime around 1670 or 1671.

In those days a craftsman needed to be recognized and promoted by patrons to make his work widely known.
Gibbons was fortunate in that he was blessed with extraordinary talent in woodworking, and that his talent was recognized and promoted by a succession of patrons until he eventually came to the notice of Charles II.
Charles gave Gibbons commissions, as did William III and George I. Gibbons was also a favourite of the premier architect of the age, Christopher Wren. Wren called upon Gibbon to supply decorative carving for many of his country house commissions.

The genius of Gibbons is not simply that he had a remarkable ability to mold and shape wood, but that he evolved a distinct style that was all his own. Working mostly in limewood, Gibbons' trademark was the cascade of fruit, leaves, flowers, foliage, fish, and birds. Such cascades could be applied to paneling, furniture, walls, or even chimneys.
Perhaps to prove that he was not limited in his ability to the cascades, Gibbons produced a cravat made of limewood in a perfect imitation of Venetian needlepoint. The "cravat" was so lifelike that a foreign visitor was fooled into thinking it the standard dress of the English country gentleman!
Horace Walpole, who is known to have later worn the cravat on at least one occasion, remarked in 1763, "There is no instance of man before Gibbons who gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers". The cravat is now on display in the Chapel at Chatsworth.
Much of Gibbons work survives in isolated country houses, but Hampton Court Palace near London is blessed with an abundance of fine carvings by the Dutch-born master.
William III commissioned Gibbons to redecorate his State Apartments, and was so impressed by the result that in 1693 he gave Gibbons permission to use the title "Master Carver".
Such carvings as the ones at Hampton Court are filled with symbolism which would have been apparent to an educated observer of the day, but which would escape most modern observers. Very often each object in the carving would have a particular meaning or reference to a classical Greek or Roman ideal or story.
Some of Gibbons best work outside Hampton Court survives at Petworth House in Sussex, in particular a ceiling he designed for the Duke of Devonshire, and at Lyme Park and Dunham Massey in Cheshire, Belton House in Lincolnshire and Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire. Other fine examples of his work can be seen at Windsor, and St Paul's in London. Also in London, the font at All Hallows by the Tower church has a wooden cover carved by Gibbons in 1682.
Grinling Gibbons work had an enormous influence of interior design and decor during the Golden Age of the English country house. Later craftsmen such as Thomas Chippendale are known to have been heavily influenced by his work. Grinling Gibbons died in 1720.

David Esterly

BOOK REVIEW
‘The Lost Carving’ by David Esterly
By Buzzy Jackson
 |  GLOBE CORRESPONDENT  
  JANUARY 03, 2013 in The Boston Globe / http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2013/01/03/book-review-the-lost-carving-journey-heart-making-david-esterly/VTIaWyy3kEBvE5vtOiLSON/story.html

David Esterly’s memoir, “The Lost Carving,’’ is ostensibly about woodcarving, but there is more to it than that. There are precedents, of course: Robert M. Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’’ (1974) called itself “An Inquiry Into Values,” and the more recent “Shop Class as Soulcraft’’ (2009) by Matthew B. Crawford was subtitled “An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.” Esterly’s book is, besides its main topic, a “Journey to the Heart of Making.” Inquiry or journey: What’s the difference? For the most part, pretensions: Esterly doesn’t have any.
He’s not trying to convince the reader of anything (though the reader may end up convinced); he’s simply trying to understand his own path from English lit graduate student to master practitioner of high-relief, naturalistic woodcarving, an art form thought to have reached its peak in the early 18th century in the work of the Dutch-born carver Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721).
Esterly begins his story with two epiphanies. As an American student at Cambridge in the 1970s he happened to walk into St. James’s Church in London and spotted Gibbons’s carvings above the altar. “[A] shadowy tangle of vegetation, carved to airy thinness. Organic forms, in an organic medium. My steps slowed, and stopped. I stared. The sickness came over me. . . . The traffic noise on Piccadilly went silent, and I was at the still center of the universe.”
Instantly obsessed with Gibbons, Esterly resolved to research his work and write about it. But that wasn’t enough. “More than the mind needed to be deployed,” he thought, so he bought himself the raw materials used by Gibbons himself: chisels, gouges, and limewood — the preferred medium of high-relief woodcarvers. “I found that as the blade moved through the wood my whole body moved, too, with it and against it at the same time. A wave of pleasure passed through me.” Esterly was in love. He turned his back on the academic life and taught himself to carve.
Years later in 1986, now a master carver, Esterly was called back to England, to Henry VIII’s palace at Hampton Court, where a fire had recently destroyed many of the original Gibbons carvings that decorated the royal apartments. Esterly was hired to the team of artisans who would repair the lost pieces. He recognized the significance of the project; it would be the culmination of his life work (what Crawford would call soulcraft) and a reunion with his great teacher and master, Grinling Gibbons. It was also a reckoning: Would he really be capable of repairing this masterpiece?
Some of the challenges he faced were technical — before the invention of sandpaper, how did carvers smooth finished pieces? — but even more were bureaucratic, as Esterly navigated the cliques and politics of the British heritage industry. Along the way he reveals some of the lessons he learned through the practice of his craft. The wisdom that comes from making mistakes, for example, and the way in which “[d]isaster allows nature to take control, to create its own order. Disaster can be a fine designer.” He learns humility in the presence of a block of wood. “The wood began as a submissive, put-upon thing, then gradually came to life,” he writes: “A carver begins as a god and ends as slave.”
“The Lost Carving’’ is a book about the rewards of hard work and learning to appreciate one’s limits. It’s also an exploration of the ways in which great art can enrich our lives in the most tangible ways. This is a serious, beautiful book about craftsmanship written not by a frustrated philosopher but, as Esterly proudly describes himself, by “a dirty monk with a vision.”

THE LOST CARVING: A Journey to the Heart of Making
Author:
David Esterly
Publisher:
Viking

Thomas Chippendale is the world's finest furniture designer.mpg

Grinling Gibbons' carvings at Hampton Court Palace

"A sphinx without a secret", or a true Mystery? "The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery" by Catherine Bailey

 The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey - review
Frances Wilson on deaths and disappearances in Belvoir Castle
By Frances Wilson
The Guardian, Friday 16 November 2012 / http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/16/the-secret-rooms-catherine-bailey-review

When Catherine Morland, her imagination fuelled by Gothic romances, visits the Tilney family home in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, she hopes to find a suite of "secreted" rooms in which "something is certainly to be concealed." Her wish is granted when she is shown the chamber in which, nine years before, Mrs Tilney had died. Hearing that the lady's death was sudden and that the room has since remained untouched, "Catherine's blood ran cold with … horrid suggestions." Was Mrs Tilney murdered by her husband? The room, Catherine decides, contains a delicious mystery.
Catherine Bailey also likes bloodcurdling secrets. In her previous book, Black Diamonds, she delved into the archives at Wentworth, the Yorkshire home of the feuding Fitzwilliams, and found a skeleton in every cupboard. In The Secret Rooms, Bailey takes her magnifying glass to Belvoir Castle, home of the Dukes of Rutland. Her original plan had been to research a book about the ploughmen and fieldworkers from the Belvoir estate who had served in the first world war. The archives she needs are stored in the castle's five locked muniment rooms, and when Bailey is told that in 1940, John, the ninth duke, died of pneumonia in one of them, her own blood runs cold with horrid suggestions. Why did John choose to die here rather than in any of the 320 more opulent rooms in the castle? Why has the room since been untouched? A former servant tells Bailey that at the time of the duke's death, "a culture of secrecy pervaded the castle." John had been closeted in these "secret rooms" for a decade; organising the family papers was "his life's work". Bailey's interest in history gives way to her passion for mystery, and she discards the sensible book she had been planning to write this silly one instead.
Deciding that John had "died in mysterious circumstances", she now can't throw a stone without hitting a secret. The "secret rooms" are filled with "top secrets", "dark secrets", boxes marked "secret" and secrets people have "taken to the grave". Disappointingly, none of these secrets is a secret at all, merely something that no one has so far bothered to venture into. Neither does the book contain the gothic mystery promised in the subtitle: the story Bailey tells seems instead to be a quintessentially Edwardian one of class obsession, hypocrisy and constipated emotion.
Reading the family correspondence, Bailey discovers that John has edited his own biography. There are gaps in the otherwise complete letter runs, one of which coincides with the death, when John was seven, of his elder brother, Haddon. A plaque next to Haddon's tomb – an exquisite life-size effigy modelled in plaster by his mother, Violet – states that he died of TB, but there is also the suggestion that Haddon died, as Violet put it in a letter, "after twisting something inside". Either way, after his brother's funeral, John was sent to live with his uncle Charlie. Seeing his "dismissal" from Belvoir in the darkest possible light, Bailey inevitably wonders at the "chilling possibility that John had actually killed his brother" in some kind of accident. But Violet, a considerably more interesting woman than Bailey presents her, might just as plausibly have removed her young son from the grief-stricken house as an act of kindness. The distribution of children around the family was, until recently, an unremarkable event, and Charlie clearly provided a far happier home for John than the wretched one he had left behind.
Letters written in cypher between John and Charlie once again get the drums rolling. Decoded, they describe a row between father and son in which John describes his father, at one point, as "Asshole, C***". The ferocity of his words, Bailey writes pensively, "suggests a darker reality behind the glittering surface of their lives", except that the surface of family life at Belvoir Castle had never remotely glittered.
The final and most striking gap in the archive begins in 1915, when John, who is meant to be with his battalion in France, simply vanishes from the records. In her search for his whereabouts, Bailey describes every blind alley and quotes in full a series of irrelevant letters. The mystery is resolved when she reads the Belvoir visitor's book: John has gone home. His return to the safety of the castle for the duration of the war is the secret described on the book's cover as "so dark that it consumed the life of the man who fought to his death to keep it hidden". It is certainly a grim story, but has hardly been hidden. The fact that Violet kept her son back from the war is a matter of public record. Not wanting to lose the heir to the estate, she pulled strings to ensure that John was given a fraudulent medical discharge before his battalion saw action. It was the evidence of his "desertion" that, Bailey suggests, he was trying to erase before he died.
One is reminded of Oscar Wilde's short story about an enigmatic woman whose furtive activities are shrouded in mystery. After her death it transpires that she had "a passion for secrecy" but nothing to hide; she was, Wilde concludes, "a sphinx without a secret".

Book review: The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey

PUBLISHERS today have a lot to answer for, not least the ­misleading extended titles of books. This book unravels a mystery and comes as close to the truth about John Manners, the 9th Duke of Rutland as is possible given his extraordinary efforts to conceal it.
By: Christopher SilvesterPublished: Fri, November 23, 2012 in Express / http://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/books/360040/Book-review-The-Secret-Rooms-A-True-Gothic-Mystery-by-Catherine-Bailey

However, apart from the setting in Belvoir Castle, the vague presence of a family curse and the Duke’s secret obsession, this “Gothic” tale lacks horror, madness and violence.
Instead, Catherine Bailey has produced a fine, suspenseful, atmospheric tale of how she unearthed shameful aspects of an aristocratic family’s past.
When the colours were raised in 1914, 1,700 men from the Belvoir estate in Leicestershire, which encompassed several villages, volunteered to fight, the 8th Duke’s heir among them.
In return for this fulfilment of duty their situations would be kept open for them, their families would live rent-free in their tied cottages for the duration and their dependants would receive their wages (less their army pay).
Many of them joined the same regiment, the 4th Leicesters, in which 28-year-old John held the rank of lieutenant, and of which his father and earlier dukes of Rutland had been honorary colonel. Of the 1,700 men who enlisted 250 lost their lives. Bailey’s original intention had been to follow the lives of all volunteers from the presumptive ducal heir downwards.
The 4th Leicesters were drafted into the Ypres Salient, in Belgium, where a prolonged battle was taking place. John kept a fairly detailed diary up until the beginning of July 1915, when his entries ceased. Bailey was puzzled to discover this.
She also found that all family correspondence from the second half of 1915 had either gone missing or had been weeded out.
The most likely culprit was John himself, an otherwise decent man who had spent the last few years of his life reclusively inhabiting the five gloomy and incommodious Muniment Rooms of Belvoir Castle, to which servants were denied access.
There he devoted himself to collating and cataloguing the Manners family’s voluminous correspondence, private documents and household accounts going back several centuries. And there he died of pneumonia in 1940, lying on a lumpy old sofa.
The curious matter of the missing correspondence set Bailey on an entirely different quest and we accompany her as she exposes the family’s secrets.
Here be a monster, certainly, though not of the conventional Gothic kind. Violet, Duchess of Rutland, John’s mother, was a controlling, manipulative, and slightly sinister matriarch: a nastier version of that other Violet, Downton Abbey’s Dowager Duchess of Grantham (played by Maggie Smith).
She once declared that she would rather John had died in battle or that his sister Lady Diana Manners had cancer than that Diana should marry Duff Cooper, a mere career diplomat with an income of £300 a year
The Manners family faced an existential threat in 1915. Were the ducal heir presumptive to be killed in the trenches his mother and sisters would have been rendered penniless by the rules of entail, since both his title and estate would have passed to his half-brother Cecil, a confirmed bachelor with no heirs.
Violet acted with exemplary ruthlessness in securing the family line. Lady Diana Manners, who would become a leading social figure between the wars, was enlisted in the conspiracy in a seemingly appalling way. John survived to marry and father five children, including three sons, but he was made to sacrifice a part of his soul in the process.
Some readers might think the secrets too modestly shocking but if you have the patience for a less melodramatic and more nuanced Downton Abbey then this excellent work of family history will work for you.

 The 9th Duke

 On 25 November 1882 Violet Lindsay married, at St George's, Hanover Square, London, Henry John Brinsley Manners (1852–1925), who in 1888 became Marquess of Granby (making her Lady Granby), and in 1906 succeeded his father as 8th Duke of Rutland (with her as Duchess of Rutland). The pair were opposites – Manners was handsome in a conventional way, Conservative, aristocratic, and with more interest in hunting and the chorus line at the theatre than in the arts, whereas she was seen as beautiful and bohemian – and, though she gave birth to one daughter and two sons (Lord Haddon, and another) to guarantee his title's succession, Violet looked outside the marriage for comfort. Disraeli's former private secretary, Montague Corry, 1st Baron Rowton (1838–1903) apparently fathered her second daughter, Violet (Letty), and Harry Cust (aka Henry John Cockayne, 1861–1917) the third, Diana.(later Diana Duff Cooper)
However, her eldest son's death at the age of nine in 1894 devastated her, and she poured her grief into producing his tomb sculptures herself. The plaster cast for this work – her son, reclining on an elaborate base decorated with relief portraits of his mother's family – was considered by her as her best work. (She kept it in her London house until – a month before she died – it was accepted by the Tate Gallery). Her other son at least survived the slaughter of World War I (being kept away from the front, and marrying into another Souls family), though her daughter Violet's husband, Hugo Francis Charteris, Lord Elcho (born on 28 December 1884), was killed in the Egyptian campaign on 23 April 1916, and most of her daughter Diana's friends and suitors died on the western front.

Belvoir Castle
 A Norman castle originally stood on the high ground in this spot. During the English Civil War, it was one of the more notable strongholds of the king's supporters. It eventually passed into the hands of the Dukes of Rutland and following a fire, was rebuilt by the wife of the 5th Duke, and gained its present Gothic castle look. The architect James Wyatt was chiefly responsible for this restructuring, and the result is a building which bears a superficial resemblance to a medieval castle, its central tower reminiscent of Windsor Castle. The present Castle is the fourth building to have stood on the site since Norman times.
Belvoir was a royal manor until it was granted to Robert, 1st baron de Ros in 1257. When that family died out in 1508, the manor and castle passed to George Manners, who inherited the castle and barony through his mother. His son was created Earl of Rutland in 1525, and John Manners, 9th Earl of Rutland was created Duke of Rutland in 1703. So Belvoir castle has been the home of the Manners family for five hundred years, and seat of the Dukes of Rutland for over three centuries.
Whilst visiting Belvoir castle in the 1840s Anna Maria Russell, Duchess of Bedford found that the normal time for dinner was between 7:00 and 8:30 p.m. An extra meal called luncheon had been created to fill the midday gap between breakfast and dinner, but as this new meal was very light, the long afternoon with no refreshment at all left people feeling hungry. She found a light meal of tea (usually Darjeeling) and cakes or sandwiches was the perfect balance. The Duchess found taking an afternoon snack to be such a perfect refreshment that she soon began inviting her friends to join her. Afternoon tea quickly became an established and convivial repast in many middle and upper class households.
The castle is open to the public and contains many works of art. The Queen's Royal Lancers Regimental Museum of the 17th and 21st Lancers was established here in 1964 but was required to leave in October 2007. The highlights of the tour are the lavish staterooms, the most famous being the Elizabeth Saloon (named after the wife of the 5th Duke), the Regents Gallery and the Roman inspired State Dining Room.

The 10th Duke

Belvoir Castle Virtual Tour

The Smile of an english tailor ...very funny sketch starting at minute 04:06 ...Orson Welles missing tapes 3.mp4

The Prince of Wales visits Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard