Moving Rooms: The Trade in Architectural Salvages

About this book

Since at least Tudor times there have been architectural salvages: panelling chimney pieces doorways or any fixtures and fittings might be removed from an old interior to be replaced by more fashionable ones. Not surprisingly a trade developed and architects builders masons and sculptors sought out these salvages. By 1820 there was a growing profession of brokers and dealers in London and a century later antique shops were commonplace throughout England. This fascinating book documents the break-up sale and re-use of salvages in Britain and America where the fashion for so-called Period Rooms became a mainstay of the transatlantic trade. Much appreciated by museum visitors period rooms have become something of a scholarly embarrassment as research reveals that many were assembled from a variety of sources. One American embraced the trade as no other--the larger-than-life William Randolph Hearst--who purchased tens of thousands of architectural salvages between 1900 and 1935. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art