Gow, Ian

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Gow, Ian

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer, historian, and curator. National Trust for Scotland, curator.

WRITINGS:

Ulster after the Agreement, Friends of the Union (London, England), 1986.

(With Timothy Clifford)The National Gallery of Scotland: An Architectural and Decorative History, Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1988.

The Scottish Interior: Georgian and Victorian Decor, preface by John Cornforth, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1992.

(Editor, with Alistair Rowan)Scottish Country Houses, 1600-1914, Edinburgh University Press (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1995.

Scottish Houses and Gardens: From the Archives of Country Life, Aurum (London, England), 1997.

Craigievar Castle, Division of the National Trust for Scotland (Edinburgh, Scotland), 1999.

Scotland's Lost Houses, Aurum (London, England), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Writer and historian Ian Gow is a curator for the National Trust of Scotland. Gow is a frequent writer on topics related to Scottish architectural history. His works include The Scottish Interior: Georgian and Victorian Decor, which assembles a visual record of the history of Scottish interior design;Scottish Country Houses, 1600-1914, edited by Gow and Alistair Rowan, which focuses on notable Scottish country architecture over a period of more than 300 years;Scottish Houses and Gardens: From the Archives of Country Life, a visual compendium of architectural photography from Country Life magazine; and Craigievar Castle, the official guidebook to the noted Scottish castle.

In Scotland's Lost Houses, Gow assembles photographic records from both the archives of Country Life magazine and the National Monuments Records of Scotland to document the remaining examples of the rapidly vanishing country houses of Scotland. Gow covers topics such as the architectural style of the houses, the decline of certain architectural styles that led to the destruction of many Scottish country houses, and the remaining houses that have so far stood against time and disfavor. "This book covers a wide range of Georgian and Victorian houses, recorded both in their prime and on their last legs immediately prior to (or during) demolition," commented John Martin Robinson in Apollo. Gow's work also serves as "a record of several lost masterpieces" of Scottish country homes and related architecture, Robinson noted. Gow also covers once-prominent houses such as Hamilton Palace, since demolished, and Amisfield, an eighteenth-century villa designed for Francis Charterist, whom Robinson called "the greatest patron of architects in 18th-century Scotland." Robinson also noted that Gow's description of Hamilton Palace "draws on 19th-century inventories of the house and amounts to a lively tour of this glorious house in its heyday."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Apollo, April, 2007, John Martin Robinson, "With Nineveh and Tyre: Both the Wealth of Vanished Scottish Houses and the Heroic Documenting of Them by the National Monuments Record of Scotland Are Celebrated in This Absorbing Book of Photographs," review of Scotland's Lost Houses, p. 109.

Architects' Journal, August 19, 1992, John McKean, review of The Scottish Interior: Georgian and Victorian Decor, p. 51.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 1994, review of The Scottish Interior, p. 8.

Spectator, December 13, 1997, review of Scottish Houses and Gardens: From the Archives of Country Life, p. 42.

Times Literary Supplement, January 19, 2007, Gavin Stamp, "Rubble-Makers," review of Scotland's Lost Houses, p. 9.