Edwin Rickards by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

Edwin Rickards by Timothy Brittain-Catlin

Edwin Rickards was the most flamboyant of Edwardian architects: his buildings were said by John Summerson to fizz like champagne. During a short working life, launched at the age of 25 by winning the competition to design Cardiff City Hall with his partners H.V. Lanchester and James Stewart, he completed four spectacular baroque buildings. Rickards’ work was unique in Edwardian architecture for his personal combination of French and especially Austrian sources. Working closely with H.C. Fehr and Henry Poole, leading practitioners of the New Sculpture, he designed two of the major monuments of the period. As well as being one of the best freehand draughtsmen in London, he was also a prodigious caricaturist. With a foot in the demi-monde and an endless appetite for architectural and personal adventure, Rickards was an unforgettable figure to everyone who met him. Illustrated throughout with stunning new photography by Robin Forster and by Rickards’ own sketches and drawings, this book portrays his close friendship with the novelist Arnold Bennett who described him, along with H.G Wells, as one of ‘the two most interesting, provocative, and stimulating men I have yet encountered’, and his meteoric career that ended with his early death.

‘No mean wordsmith, Brittain-Catlin has done a fine job, erudite and entertaining, informative and perceptive, with a splendid choice of visual matter’ James Stevens Curl, The Critic Magazine

‘Timothy Brittain-Catlin’s new monograph in The Victorian Society series, published by Liverpool University Press, is a welcome and incisive introduction to the work of this extraordinary figure. Brittain-Catlin deftly deals with the complexity of his character and with the structural and artistic qualities of his architecture, and the book benefits from excellent new photography by Robin Forster which conveys the sheer bravado of these buildings’ Jeremy Musson, The Victorian

Timothy Brittain-Catlin is an architect and architectural historian at the University of Cambridge.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781837645077
ISBN 10	1837645078
Title	Edwin Rickards
Author	Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Series	Victorian Architects
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Liverpool University Press
Year published	2023-11-17
Number of pages	168
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable