A Tour to Hafod, in Cardiganshire, the seat of Thomas Johnes

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A MASTERPIECE. In half calf over contemporary green marbled boards, blind tooling. Spine, gilt titles & tooling. Internally, [8], [1], 2-23 pp, [1] pl list, 15 fine hand coloured aquatints by J. C. Stadler, after Smith, 4 bookplates to fpd (including the early Beaufort plate), (626*432 mm). (Abbey Scenery 533; Prideaux p352; Russell p194). Smith's elegant testament to Thomas Johnes's Arcadian vision in the Welsh countryside. Johnes, author politician and agriculturalist retired from the limelight in 1783 and came to live at Hafod. After the disastrous fire of 1807, which almost entirely destroyed his famous library, he immediately set to rebuild the house and library, his masterpiece of picturesque Gothic architecture designed by Baldwin and later extended by Nash. Johnes' activities at his model estate included a private press, developments in agriculture and timber management. But it is his dedication tot he wild landscape and particularly the ideals of William Mason whose English Garden he took in his hand and wanted no other direction that are best represented by the plates here. James Warwick Smith (President of the Linnaean Society) captures the magnificent scale of the wild cataracts, bridges, narrow gorges, and steeply wooded inclines of this landscape which is truly picturesque. It should also be pointed out that the present work is an important precursor to some of the artist John Piper's work, and as such is a book of serious interest to Piper collectors. David Fraser Jenkins in John Piper in Wales says: In 1939 [Piper] discovered Hafod, the country house by Nash and Salvin near Aberystwyth, which had been finally abandoned as a residence the year before. Not only was the building, with its contrast of styles from Indian to Classical, a perfect Piper subject, it had also been depicted by Turner, and was a subject of a masterpiece of the romantic picturesque travel book in 1810 [Tour of Hafod]. Piper wrote an article [Decrepit Glory: A Tour of Hafod, published in the Architectural Review, June 1940; republished in Buildings and Prospects (1948) in which Cumberland is extensively quoted], made the series of photographs which are now an important record, and drew and painted the home and grounds. (Abbey Scenery 533; Prideaux p352; Russell p194)