Catalogue
Tim Knox, previous director, on the satisfaction of updating his own guide to the Soane
Sir John Soane’s Museum London was my first proper, hardback book (although I had written guidebooks for some National Trust houses).
Published in 2009, it filled a much-needed gap – it was the museum’s “own” book on the Soane. There had been a beautiful book by Stefan Buzas in the mid-1990s, but it was very much an architect’s view of Soane, and the illustrations were seriously out of date – the informed eye winced at the light fittings, expanses of lino and house plants in almost every view. Also, we didn’t make much money from it in our shop.
The new book covered Soane’s life and the creation of his house-museum, as well as a room-by-room guide to its labyrinthine wonders, atmospherically captured in Derry Moore’s photographs. Specially drawn house plans gave readers a sense of the almost gastric complexity of the Soane museum.
But as the Opening up the Soane restoration project progressed, it became necessary to update the book. A second edition was published in 2012 and the third edition this year.
I had left the institution in early 2013 to take up my present post as the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; so I was pleased to be asked to make the amendments to this latest edition. In particular, a completely new account of the restored Private Apartments was needed; Gareth Gardner provided 15 splendid new photographs to show the new developments visually.
It was strange revisiting the Soane, for eight years so much a part of my life, after an absence of almost two years. But the alterations that had reinstated
the Model Room, Soane’s Bedchamber and the Bath Room were exactly as we had planned and look as if they have always been there.
My former colleagues Helen Dorey and Sue Palmer generously supplied detailed information and proofread my text. “Is Soane’s hair in the Jackson portrait grey or just powdered?” was one question. I was also determined to mention one of my favourite objects in the collection: Soane’s case of mummified cats.
I am pleased with the finished book, and hope the museum administration is too. It is strange to think that my old office is now dominated by the extraordinary Model Stand, with its cork model of the ruins of Pompeii, and that the strange little belvedere overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields where I once kept my sports kit and my dogs had their bed, is now restocked with its original compliment of plaster casts and pictures.
Tim Knox is the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Published in 2009, it filled a much-needed gap – it was the museum’s “own” book on the Soane. There had been a beautiful book by Stefan Buzas in the mid-1990s, but it was very much an architect’s view of Soane, and the illustrations were seriously out of date – the informed eye winced at the light fittings, expanses of lino and house plants in almost every view. Also, we didn’t make much money from it in our shop.
The new book covered Soane’s life and the creation of his house-museum, as well as a room-by-room guide to its labyrinthine wonders, atmospherically captured in Derry Moore’s photographs. Specially drawn house plans gave readers a sense of the almost gastric complexity of the Soane museum.
But as the Opening up the Soane restoration project progressed, it became necessary to update the book. A second edition was published in 2012 and the third edition this year.
I had left the institution in early 2013 to take up my present post as the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge; so I was pleased to be asked to make the amendments to this latest edition. In particular, a completely new account of the restored Private Apartments was needed; Gareth Gardner provided 15 splendid new photographs to show the new developments visually.
It was strange revisiting the Soane, for eight years so much a part of my life, after an absence of almost two years. But the alterations that had reinstated
the Model Room, Soane’s Bedchamber and the Bath Room were exactly as we had planned and look as if they have always been there.
My former colleagues Helen Dorey and Sue Palmer generously supplied detailed information and proofread my text. “Is Soane’s hair in the Jackson portrait grey or just powdered?” was one question. I was also determined to mention one of my favourite objects in the collection: Soane’s case of mummified cats.
I am pleased with the finished book, and hope the museum administration is too. It is strange to think that my old office is now dominated by the extraordinary Model Stand, with its cork model of the ruins of Pompeii, and that the strange little belvedere overlooking Lincoln’s Inn Fields where I once kept my sports kit and my dogs had their bed, is now restocked with its original compliment of plaster casts and pictures.
Tim Knox is the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge