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@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 16, 2026, 10:25 AM

The staircase at Somerset House in the wing that housed the Royal Academy, the Antiquaries and the Royal Society, satirised as the ‘Exhibition Stare Case’ by Thomas Rowlandson #c18 #c18th #18thc

View of the staircase from below with a round window at the top and metalwork balustrades painted blue along the not-quite-circular staircase descending through white plasterwork

Another view, from the side in a landing

Reproduction of Rowlandson ‘Exhibition Stare Case’ (c1811) with Royal Academy visitors toppling down it

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 16, 2026, 10:24 AM

At the earlier home of @antiquaries.bsky.social in Somerset House: the old council chamber with the monogram SA in the 1780s plasterwork by Thomas Collins #c18 #c18th #18thc

View of the council chamber with a fine neoclassical plasterwork ceiling

Detail of the ceiling: the monogram SA in white plaster within a wreath with branches against a pink ground, green and white decoration to the left

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 8:49 PM

Albany (1771-76), off Piccadilly, designed by Sir William Chambers as a town house for the 1st Viscount Melbourne but divided into freehold sets for bachelors in 1802. Bachelorhood no longer required & women permitted, but kids verboten. Byron lived here #c18 #c18th #18thc

Up a very short street from Piccadilly in a small courtyard (with some parking), a black Palladian building with a door framed by white columns, two storeys of white framed windows above, all below a pediment framed in white.

@johnobrien.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 4:37 PM

This week's examples of poems from eighteenth-century newspapers are parodies of Hamlet's soliloquy: "To Drink or Not to Drink”
literatureinc.substack.com/p/to-drink-o... #c18 #poetry #c18th

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 1:26 PM

Random object in the V&A East Storehouse: Masonic armchair from the mid #c18 #c18th #18thc

Chippendale-ish walnut armchair with lighter wood inlay featuring Masonic emblems (ruler, sextant etc) at the top. Seat cushion covered in white ptotective fabric. From the Middlesex Lodge.

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 10:15 AM

Nerding out at the V&A East Storehouse with this enamel portrait medallion of Horace Walpole, donated by Lady Charlotte Schreiber! (Catalogue says it's 'probably' Walpole, but it surely is - I know that face) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Oval medallion in a brass frame with a loop at the top for suspension. White enamel ground on copper, transfer-print portrait in purple. HW wears a frock coat and white shirt with cravat, hair natural but powdered and curled over the ears.

My purple-gloved hand holding the medallion

Underside with cracked surface, V&A accession number painted in black, two monogrammed collector’s labels (one with ‘Portrait Hirace Walpole’ in ink

Online catalogue version of the portrait side of the medallion, without reflections

@stephanieoffer.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 8:43 PM

Even the Barings don't show up, unless I'm not searching correctly? From what I have noticed so far is that it is more useful for #C17th than #C18th? 🗃

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 11:25 AM

Chinoiserie mirror made for Halnaby Hall, Yorkshire (c1750-160, V&A #c18 #c18th #18thc

Rocco mirror with elaborate scrollwork in gilt wood, with Chinese figures and houses perched here and there

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 7:52 AM

Table snuffboxes made for Frederick the Great (c1765, c1775-90) from the Gilbert collection, V&A #c18 #c18th #18thc

Mother-of-pearl, various gemstones,gold, silver and foil in a pattern of rococo scrollwork and flowers

Bloodstone and a profusion of gemstones in the form of a bouquet of flowers

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 13, 2026, 3:37 PM

Pair of white marble reliefs (c1686) at the V&A. From the workshop of Grinling Gibbons & Arnold Quellin for King James II’s short-lived RC chapel in Whitehall Palace #Jacobite (long) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Putto with a crowned escutcheon bearing the Scottish royal arms

Putto with a crowned escutcheon bearing the royal arms of Ireland

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 13, 2026, 1:21 PM

London! First stop, the ceramics galleries at the V&A #c18 #c18th #18thc

@sarahmurden.bsky.social Sep 12, 2026, 2:27 PM

From the archives of All Things Georgian, 'Martin Van Butchell and his crowded marriage' - wp.me/p3JTNy-4FA #c18 #c18th #18thc

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 12, 2026, 10:32 AM

Silver snuffbox (English, c1740) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Cartouche-shaped box with rococo design of scrollwork and flowers surrounding a balustrade with a garden landscape beyond

@goldenageofpiracy.bsky.social Sep 12, 2026, 9:14 AM

Archaic word of the day:

izzard – the letter Z (First recorded in 1730)

#englishlanguage #history #c18th

@c18ah.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 2:01 PM

Today in eighteenth-century poetry: date of birth of James Thomson (1700-1748), Elizabeth Rowe (née Singer) (1674-1737), and Joanna Baillie (1762-1851).

Poems are included in the #EighteenthCenturyPoetryArchive:
https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/

#c18th #poetry #DH #OTD

James Thomson (1700-1748) / © National Portrait Gallery, London

Elizabeth Rowe (née Singer) (1674-1737) / © National Portrait Gallery, London

Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) / © The Hunterian Museum

@bethanyqualls.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 12:08 PM

Seriously, we're looking for everything from transatlantic exchanges to coterie publishing circles, from circuits of meteorology and ocean currents to masquerade balls.
How did/do spheres shape our ideas of the #c18th, its people and discourses?

Puns highly encouraged but not required!

@bethanyqualls.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 12:08 PM

@elizagiardina.bsky.social & I are co-chairing an #asecs27 roundtable about "Spheres: Then and Now," very broadly construed. Some #c18th ideas:

Étienne-Louis Boullée’s cenotaph for Isaac Newton
Hot air balloons
London’s time ball
Globes in Milton, maritime history
Habermas public vs private

Spheres: Then and Now, a call for papers for a roundtable at American Society of #18thC Studies 2027

Description: Étienne-Louis Boullée’s proposed cenotaph for Isaac Newton. Hot air balloons. London’s time ball. Globes—poetic and terrestrial—in Milton and maritime history. Habermas’s idea of public vs private social space. Expansive and holistic by their very nature, spheres appeared across the long and deep eighteenth century. Both literal and physical, spheres and circles theorized material, philosophical, spatial, artistic, and social interactions in the period, containerizing concepts in ways we often take for granted in the twenty-first century.

This roundtable (emphasis on round) seeks to bring together the eighteenth century’s variety of spheres from around the world, exploring their wider uses and multimedia appearances. We invite interdisciplinary contributions that consider spheres, balls, circles, and other roundness as a way to explore everything from transatlantic exchanges to coterie publishing circles, from circuits of meteorology and ocean currents to masquerade balls. How did/do spheres shape our ideas of the eighteenth century, its people and discourses? What makes the sphere particularly suited for discussions of anchored social spaces, then and now? How do spheres impact maritime exploration, Greenwich Mean Time, and other nautical orientation methods? What do spheres construct and why do we keep coming back to them, over and over, even as building physical spheres is famously a difficult task? Where do spheres show up and surprise us? Where do they feel so obvious as to be not worth notice? Together we hope to circle around these questions—metaphorical, spiritual, physical—approaching but never quite reaching a center.

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 11, 2026, 10:24 AM

Small tureen or broth bowl with cover (Bow, c1755) #c18 #c18th #18thc

White porcelain with raised decoration in the form of flowering prunus branches (derived from Chinese originals and widely imitated by English and European factories e.g. Bow as here, Chelsea, Chantilly, Saint-Cloud, Meissen)

Detail of lid showing flowering branches and handle in the form of a twig

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 10, 2026, 10:37 AM

Silver and agate snuffbox (English, c1740) #c18 #c18th #18thc

Cartouche-shaped solver box with engraved flowers around the rim of the lid, which encloses a variegated brown agate with moss-like inclusions

@nguthrie.bsky.social Sep 9, 2026, 10:16 AM

Figure of a Sami sorceress by J-J Kändler (Meissen, c1750), recently sold by E&H Manners to the Victoria & Albert Museum #c18 #c18th #18thc

Figure of an ugly old woman with bad teeth, hooked nose, heavy eyebrows and eyes facing in different directions. She wears a long white robe and long black coat, a scarf on her head. She holds a white oval drum inscribed with figures of animals and hunters.
Dealer's description: In this unique and unusually large figure Kaendler has modelled a grotesque and haggard sorceress holding a drum which is a precise copy of the Sámi shaman’s drum that was presented to the Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II, on 28th March 1668 by Kristian Albrekt, Duke of Holstein (1641-1695). The drum survives and is now held in the Museum für Völkerkunde Dresden. The drawing on the reindeer skin and the pierced structure of the wooden bowl are copied almost exactly indicating that both Kaendler and the painter of the figure had access to the original drum. The reason for this model being made is not recorded, it was clearly not for commercial production but for some purpose within the court of Dresden. The Dresden drum was most likely one of those confiscated by missionaries seeking to covert the Sámi to Christianity in the early 17th century. A number were brought to Copenhagen for the royal Kunstkammer and the missionary college. It was presented to the Elector along with a two-part painting titled “Dis sint de sitten von Laplant” [These are the customs of Lapland]. The drum (and painting) are recorded in the inventories of the “Indianische Cammer” in 1684, 1710, 1716, 1783 (by which time the bone clapper had been lost) and 1821. In 1838, it was recorded (without the painting) in the inventory of the “Türkenzelt” [Turkish Tent]; in 1838 it became part of the Historical Museum of the royal collections, and in 1979 it was transferred to the Zoologische und Anthropologisch-Ethnographische Museum in Dresden, now known as the Museum für Völkerkunde.
37.0 cm high
See https://www.rare-ceramics.com/past-sales/a-meissen-figure-of-an-sorceress/