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 director 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. 

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 provisional, a quality that Hobhouse has said he actively sought when building the collection. 

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. 

‘We enjoy working daily with the Mount team at Shatwell - gathering exciting new perspectives on the
material they have selected from the collections here, admiring the extraordinary quality of the printing,
and watching familiar drawings assume a different life in their new frames’

Niall Hobhouse