Insular Rococo Architecture, Politics, and Society in Ireland and England 1710-1770

"What holes the book below the waterline is its assumptions about craftsmanship and creativity. The authors repeat one of the most egregious fallacies of John Ruskin; namely that an artisan working in a style we like must have had more creative engagement in his work than one working in a style we do not. No amount of visual analysis can compensate for the gaps which exist in the documentary record; the fact that a large proportion of a Dublin "rococo" ceiling sticks out from the plane, and therefore that much of it has to be modelled rather than cast from a block, does not in itself tell us that a particular creative process must have gone into it.Mowl, Timothy is the author of 'Insular Rococo Architecture, Politics, and Society in Ireland and England 1710-1770' with ISBN 9781861890443 and ISBN 1861890443.