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Lädt ... British West Indies Style: Antigua, Jamaica, Barbados, and Beyondvon Michael Connors
Keine Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.  Petra.Xs | Apr 2, 2013 |  keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
Breathtaking photographs capture the history and unique design of the English island great houses, detailing the hardwood furniture, terraced gardens, walled courtyards, and interiors. Perhaps the most admired and influential of tropical styles, the English island style transformed residences into private paradises. British West Indies Style is a lavish account of the interiors, architecture, and lifestyle of the English colonial great houses and historic town houses in the Caribbean--from Antigua, Jamaica, Nevis, Barbados, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts, Mustique to the less-traveled islands of Bequia and Dominica. Close to fifty private homes are featured, with unique collections of antique, indigenous, and colonial furniture: a southern plantation style scaled and refreshingly adapted to the airy, sunny climate of the Windward and Leeward Islands. Presenting a world rarely seen by visitors--the homes of the islands' affluent planters, both historical and contemporary--the English island styles are elegant yet practical and accessible, giving ideas for the use of local materials, painting and stenciling techniques, environment-enhancing design, and indoor/outdoor living--all of which are ubiquitous in contemporary interior design. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)728.3709729The arts Architecture Residential buildings Specific kinds of conventional housing DetachedKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (2)
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All the pictures are of old Great Houses and villas constructed either at the time of or later in the same style as the Plantation era, the time of slavery. The furniture mostly dates from that time too, or again was meant to reflect the grandeur, wealth and comfort of that age. For some.
Not all the British islands have these houses, and it is notable that the more Great Houses an island has, the more likely it is to be poor. After the ending of slavery, many slave masters stayed on and ran their plantation with hired labour, still maintaining the power structure and the economic disparity between Black and White. Eventually sugar became uneconomic and the economies diversified, but those resident Whites and a rising class of their light-skinned mixed race children maintained their hold as owners of enterprises and in many of these islands still do.
There are other islands that on the ending of slavery let it be known that the (majority of) Whites were not welcome and they left, their Great Houses burned or fallen into disrepair if there were no mixed race progeny to take them over. Other islands suffered terrible cholera epidemics and as there was no longer profit from sugar and the outgoings to maintain a business were higher than any potential income now that labour had to be hired, the Whites left and were not replaced.
These islands had to start from scratch, the Blacks went in for agriculture, charcoal, animals, ship-building, many things, and built their carpenter houses, but from the start they were all on one level: ex-slaves and they had to be self-reliant, there were no masters to employ and pay them. This structure of equality only began to break down about 20 years ago with the coming of wealth and hasn't completely gone as yet.
So this book of pictures of glorious houses and furniture of times past is also a record of surviving privilege among those who were never entitled to it in the first place. (