Overview

An exploration of the world of Jewish country houses, their architecture and collections, and the lives of the extraordinary men and women who created, transformed, and shaped them. Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses--properties that were owned, built, or renewed by Jews--tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others inspired the European avant-garde. A few are now museums of international importance, many more are hidden treasures, and all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe--and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust. Lavishly illustrated with historical images and a new body of work by the celebrated photographer Hélène Binet, this book is the first to tell the story of Jewish country houses, from the playful historicism of the National Trust's Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire to the modernist masterpiece that is the Villa Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno--and across the pond to the United States, where American Jews infused the European country house tradition with their own distinctive concerns and experiences. This book emerges from a four-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council that aims to establish Jewish country houses as a focus for research, a site of European memory, and a significant aspect of European Jewish heritage and material culture.

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9781684582204

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Reviews

""These images stand as a reproach to those who tidy away and smarten up - Binet's pictures, and the project more widely, are all about letting the light in on the difficult and imperfect.""--Florence Hallett ""inews"" ""Jewish elite transformed the traditional notion of the country house from a site of settled privilege into a dynamic microcosm of bold self-inscription--a catalyst for new forms of sociability, patronage, art collecting, and philanthropy. Interweaving a wide array of sources and perspectives from different cultures, these essays explore gripping tales of belonging and rejection, memory and erasure, dispossession and resilience.""--Esther da Costa Meyer, Princeton University ""I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page. It sets the familiar country house story in a new, Europe-wide landscape, and tells a tale of often tragic splendor. The authors show that these are more than just houses--they are monuments to the long nineteenth-century battle between prejudice and assimilation, played out in magnificent buildings and princely collections.""--Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects ""This is a magnificent work of scholarship--it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight.""--Edmund de Waal, artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes ""This lusciously illustrated book provides an essential tour of the Jewish country houses of Europe and the UK. Each of the thirteen essays furnishes an authoritative understanding of a specific house and uses a combination of new and historic images to showcase the lives of the inhabitants and the homes' rich interiors. The final essay compares this tradition to Jewish American country houses. A must-have book for anyone interested in elegant houses or Jewish history.""--Laura Leibman, Princeton University

"""Jewish elite transformed the traditional notion of the country house from a site of settled privilege into a dynamic microcosm of bold self-inscription--a catalyst for new forms of sociability, patronage, art collecting, and philanthropy. Interweaving a wide array of sources and perspectives from different cultures, these essays explore gripping tales of belonging and rejection, memory and erasure, dispossession and resilience.""--Esther da Costa Meyer, Princeton University ""I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page. It sets the familiar country house story in a new, Europe-wide landscape, and tells a tale of often tragic splendor. The authors show that these are more than just houses--they are monuments to the long nineteenth-century battle between prejudice and assimilation, played out in magnificent buildings and princely collections.""--Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects ""This is a magnificent work of scholarship--it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight.""--Edmund de Waal, artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes ""This lusciously illustrated book provides an essential tour of the Jewish country houses of Europe and the UK. Each of the thirteen essays furnishes an authoritative understanding of a specific house and uses a combination of new and historic images to showcase the lives of the inhabitants and the homes' rich interiors. The final essay compares this tradition to Jewish American country houses. A must-have book for anyone interested in elegant houses or Jewish history.""--Laura Leibman, Princeton University"

""Jewish elite transformed the traditional notion of the country house from a site of settled privilege into a dynamic microcosm of bold self-inscription--a catalyst for new forms of sociability, patronage, art collecting, and philanthropy. Interweaving a wide array of sources and perspectives from different cultures, these essays explore gripping tales of belonging and rejection, memory and erasure, dispossession and resilience.""--Esther da Costa Meyer, Princeton University ""I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page. It sets the familiar country house story in a new, Europe-wide landscape, and tells a tale of often tragic splendor. The authors show that these are more than just houses--they are monuments to the long nineteenth-century battle between prejudice and assimilation, played out in magnificent buildings and princely collections.""--Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum and author of A History of the World in 100 Objects ""This is a magnificent work of scholarship--it illuminates complex and ambiguous stories of assimilation and identity with verve and insight.""--Edmund de Waal, artist and author of The Hare with Amber Eyes ""This lusciously illustrated book provides an essential tour of the Jewish country houses of Europe and the UK. Each of the thirteen essays furnishes an authoritative understanding of a specific house and uses a combination of new and historic images to showcase the lives of the inhabitants and the homes' rich interiors. The final essay compares this tradition to Jewish American country houses. A must-have book for anyone interested in elegant houses or Jewish history.""--Laura Leibman, Princeton University

Author Information

Juliet Carey is a senior curator at Waddesdon Manor, UK. Abigail Green is an Oxford historian and author of the award-winning Moses Montefiore: Jewish Liberator, Imperial Hero. Hélène Binet has been described by architect Daniel Liebeskind as ""one of the leading architectural photographers of the world.""

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