6 CONTEXT 178 : DECEMBER 2023 Woburn Abbey, Highclere Castle, Alnwick Castle and Holkham Hall. Owners of other grand houses, townhouses and vicarages ordered wallpapers for a variety of interiors. These included drawing rooms, dining rooms, boudoir rooms, nurseries, and bathrooms. Wallpapers for servants’ accommodation included butlers’ pantries, housekeepers’ parlours, cooks’ sitting rooms, and cottages for coachmen and gardeners. The books reveal the use of various styles of wallpaper for different rooms, and varying quality of papers. Servants’ rooms and cottages were usually papered in cheaper, but nevertheless bright and cheerful, machine-printed papers of simple designs. Some of these designs may survive, or may be obscured by later overpapering, but when inspected may form a useful basis for dating interiors. The existence of the Cowtan order books, and other publications on historical wallpapers, may prove useful. Elsewhere in this issue, Olivia Horsfall Turner, a senior creator at the V&A, looks at the transformative role of wallpaper designs by Owen Jones which are featured in her new book on the subject. A short article by Lieske Huits discusses the issue of dust and style in the Victorian interior. Elizabeth Crawford looks at the evidence of the Garrett cousins’ decorating business, using the auction catalogue of the sale of the contents of their warehouse in 1899. R&G (Rhoda and Agnes) Garrett, house decorators, had been founded in London in 1874 after training with the architect JM Bryan. The auction catalogue reveals a significant degree of late19th-century business acumen. Journal of Architectural Conservation Those whose memories extend back beyond the National Planning Policy Framework will recall the advice in PPG15 regarding alterations: ‘minor works of indifferent quality, which may seem individually of little importance, can cumulatively be very destructive of a building’s special interest’. In the Journal of Architectural Conservation (Vol 29, No 2, 2023) this principle has been likened to that of the Ship of Theseus, the decayed planks of which were gradually replaced until no original timbers were left. That analogy is frequently used in the far east in the conservation of wooden heritage buildings. The essential differences between the conservation process of the mythological ship and actual Japanese practice makes the analogy misleading. In an effort to clear up these long-standing misconceptions, a paper by Alejandro Martinez de Arbulo of the department of design and architecture, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Japan, discusses Japanese conservation guidelines and authenticity, in order to clarify the philosophy and methodology of the conservation of such wooden buildings. This clearly demonstrates an entirely valid but different approach to the conservation of historic buildings from that with which we are familiar in our Eurocentric approach to heritage management. The November issue of the Journal of Architectural Conservation (Vol 29, No 3, 2023) includes three papers from Turkey. There is particular interest in a paper by A Luciani and E Poma about modernist architecture in sub-arctic Sweden by Ralph Erskine, the British architect and planner. Perhaps better known in Scandinavia than in Britain, Erskine was responsible for the listed Byker Wall, Newcastle, and the London Ark office block in Hammersmith, west London. The paper provides a critical comparative analysis of three of Erskine’s projects undertaken between the 1950s and 1960s in the municipality of Kiruna. The aim was to understand the extent to which architectural technology could be developed to adapt modern design and ideals to the sub-arctic climate. The authors’ research is oriented towards examining the augmentation of the heritage value and conservation status of selected designs in relation to Erskine’s architectural vision. As in the near future only one fragment of one of the three original buildings will be preserved. The research is seen as contributing to passing on the heritage value of the design and construction process to future generations. At an early stage, the buildings were considered worthy of formal protection, only later to be determined to have insufficient cultural or historical value to justify such a designation. It was considered that they formed part
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