RAWLINS, Thomas.

A very good, clean, large copy – remarkably signed by the author – of the first edition of this lavishly illustrated architectural book, printed at Norwich (BAL) and depicting plans and elevations of designs for country and town houses for ‘Gentlemen and Tradesmen, Parsonages and Summer-Retreats’. The plates are in excellent impression. The note at foot of the titlepage – ‘No copy of this work is authentic that has not my Name in my own Hand-Writing affixed to it in the Title Page’ – is followed indeed by Rawlins’ ms autograph, a very rare occurrence in architectural books. The subscribers’ list, apart from the great and good, includes the Royal Architects, William Chambers and James Adam.

Thomas Rawlins (1727-89), from Norwich, trained as a sculptor and ran a successful business of funerary monuments in his hometown. In the 1760s, he became interested in house architecture, his first work being ‘Familiar Architecture’, a ‘pattern book’ of designs for a variety of country and town buildings. ‘Some architects particularly appealed to uneducated and geographically remote audiences. […] Rawlins addressed those living in “remote Parts of the Country, where little or no Assistance for Designs is to be procured”. The text is directed to those interested in theory as well as practitioners, combining ten pages of practical remarks on the construction of arches with commentary on planning, expression, and proportion’ (Archer, p.21). The letterpress text includes remarks on arches, for young apprentices, providing the opinions of various architects on their building and strengthening, with an explanation to each plate, and dimensions. The several ‘summer retreat’ designs reflected a blossoming line of business for contemporary architects. Many designs are intended for family spaces in cities or market towns, though others are intended for ‘a gentleman […] centr’d in a row of houses two stories high, being his own estate’, although ‘his adjoining neighbours may retain shops in front, tho’ it should so happen that he is in want of additional rooms, in order as little as possible to lessen the value of his rentals’. Interestingly, the library is rarely present in most designs. Rawlins was interested in ‘the degree to which a building could affect the mind, the passions, and the soul’, believing that ‘a building should possess “character” and that it should be able to affect the observer’. For instance, a summer retreat was said to have such views as ‘may exhilarate and add fresh vigour to the mind of the wealthy and industrious inhabitant’ (Archer, pp. 48, 106). A most intersting work, a signed copy and a Norwich illustrated imprint.