It is always great to meet an old acquaintance in an unlikely place. This is exactly what happened while we were at Brighton University.
The old acquaintance in question is the Brooking Collection of Architectural Detail, currently exhibiting a few windows and architectural features from its vast archives in the Ground Floor Gallery of the University of Brighton (Grand Parade, Brighton, UK, until 12th April 2015).
As you may remember from a previous post, windows were an important element of the exhibition in the Central Pavilion of the Giardini at the 14th Venice International Architecture Exhibition.
Last year architect Rem Koolhaas, Director of the Venice Biennale, asked Charles Brooking to take some of his pieces to Italy and an entire wall of the Central Pavilion ended up being dedicated to this peculiar collection that also includes unique elements from iconic buildings such as 10 Downing Street, the original Wembley Stadium, Windsor Castle and St Paul's Cathedral.
Brooking started gathering these pieces in 1966 and now the collection is owned by a charity and is considered as a hands on facility set to help students, researchers, designers or more simply architecture enthusiasts to rediscover (also through dedicated courses) doors and windows from the 1590s to the 1970s, that belonged to palaces and historic mansions but also (and more interestingly) to humble houses.
One of the main aims of the charity at the moment is to find a permanent home to form a National Centre of Excellence for those involved in the care, repair and study of historic buildings.
Sponsored by the Brighton and Hove Heritage Commission, the event at Brighton University includes several pieces rescued from buildings in the UK. There are many inspiring architectural features among the ones on display, such as sash window glazing bars and large fanlights.
There are actually quite a few interesting fanlights: one features lead glazing bars and comes from a London-based building from 1780-85; another, dated 1821, belonged to a coffin maker workshop in Church Street, Marylebone; a third one is taken from 6 Archers Road, Southampton, and was made around 1880-1883.
Shape-wise the section of a lunette stable window from 1785, of an elliptical pivoting window from Groveland Park, Southgate, London, designed by John Nash and Humphrey Repton (from around 1797), and a 1866 round cast iron bulls eye window from Battle Hospital, Oxford Road, Reading, are particularly fascinating.
Some of the square windows incorporating glass elements add a degree of cheerfulness to the event: while the transom light with characteristic leaded stained glass design used in Lyons Corner Houses, designed by FG Wills and built in 1912 or the transom light from a semi-detached house from North Wales (from around 1928) have a stylish elegance about them, a decorative transom light window with painted glass central panel from the Wolverhampton area (dated around 1895) features geometrically complex coloured patterns.
The best one among the square windows in the exhibition remains the coloured glass transom light with tinted patches of cathedral glass and ruby border from the Aubrey Hotel, Epsom Road, Guildford, built around 1893.
As you may remember from a previous post, the Brooking National Collection contains roughly 500,000 pieces (5,000 whole windows, 10,000 window sections and 30,000 sash pulleys) and it's the only museum or collection of this type in England.
Hopefully, this compact but exhaustive exhibition at Brighton University will inspire also the students of the Fashion Design course who are currently developing their work in the same building where the collection is currently displayed.
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