Our first print collection is a collaboration with Drawing Matter, an organisation that explores the role of drawing in architectural thought and practice, and holds an archive of works dating from the sixteenth century to the present day.
The founder Niall Hobhouse allowed us to delve into the archive, housed in what was previously a 19th century store on Shatwell Farm, also the home of Mount.
Photo: Sue Barr
We worked with Drawing Matter to select pieces by eighteen different architects and designers from the 18th century up to the mid 20th century. Having not come from architectural backgrounds, the starting point for Mount was to look for images that captured our attention, and imagination.
Architectural drawings are sometimes technical, sometimes whimsical, and sometimes not even drawings at all. Many of the works we have selected do not show buildings, but express of a way of thinking about the world, through the lens of architecture and design.
Some of our selection could be described as ephemera, and some as unfinished or incomplete / provisional, a quality that Niall Hobhouse has said he actively sought when building the collection. As he puts it:
‘I am more comfortable with the provisional or the unfinished,’ Niall Hobhouse.
Nonetheless, they are all beautiful, and communicate to us something about both the maker, and the world at the time during which they were made.