The Muses of Gwinn
Art and Nature in a Garden Designed by Warren H. Manning, Charles A. Platt, and Ellen Biddle Shipman
Robin Karson
Sagapress/Abrams
| ISBN: 978-0810942929 | 204 pages | 7.125 x 10.125 inches |
| $39.95 | Cloth | Published: 04/01/1996 |
| 108 b&w photos and drawings | |
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Gwinn, one of the best-preserved estates of the Country Place Era, was originally the home of Cleveland industrialist William Mather. It has survived as an important American work of art that today tells a story about early twentieth-century landscape style, economics, and social history.
Three innovative landscape architects collaborated on the project for more than two decades: Charles A. Platt, the architect who adapted the Italian villa to an American setting; Warren H. Manning, the well-known landscape architect, planner, and designer of parks in several states; and Ellen Biddle Shipman, who brought a new American sensibility to the art of garden design.
From a previously unpublished archive of documents and images, Robin Karson presents a richly detailed and dramatically illustrated account of the lakeside estate’s development. By illuminating the battle between formal and informal design principles in creating Gwinn, Karson reveals the larger picture of emerging style in American landscape design.
“As a case study this book is a great success, but it is more than this; because of the vividness with which the story is told, Karson renders Gwinn as a living entity—not just another icon in the history of American garden making.”
“The book artfully weaves the threads of cultural context, site conditions, and the lives and motives of client and designers into a tapestry that brings to life the history of this twenty-seven-acre estate on the shore of Lake Erie.”
“Readers who love landscape and garden history will feel themselves transported, as if by a tale of great adventure.”
1996 American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award
About the Author
Robin Karson
Robin Karson, Hon. ASLA, is the founder and executive director of LALH and the author of more than one hundred articles and several books on American landscape history, including (as coeditor) Warren H. Manning, Landscape Architect and Environmental Planner; A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era; Fletcher Steele, Landscape Architect; The Muses of Gwinn, and the new introduction to the LALH revised edition of Fletcher Steele’s Design in the Little Garden. Her work has been recognized with awards from the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Foundation for Landscape Studies, the American Horticultural Society, and the Institute for Classical Architecture and Art. In addition, she has organized several touring exhibitions for LALH on topics relating to American landscape history. In 2004, Karson was named a distinguished member of the Honor Society of Sigma Lambda Alpha for her “continued high-quality contribution to the scholarship of landscape architecture and the literature of landscape architecture history.” In 2017, she was made an honorary member of the American Society of Landscape Architects.