Italy Italian Gardens Villas Giusti Conti, Boboli cm155

Oriental Rug Review/Asian trade is pleased to offer an original article from Harper's Magazine. "Italian Gardens," by Charles A. Platt. Original article from Harper's Magazine, Vol. LXXXVII, July, 1893, 14pp, (loose), 11 Illustrations, 6 1/4"x9 1/2".

About the Subject:

Garden design is the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and landscapes. Garden design may be done by the garden owner themselves, or by professionals of varying levels of experience and expertise. Most professional garden designers are trained in principles of design and in horticulture, and have an expert knowledge and experience of using plants. Some professional garden designers are also landscape architects, a more formal level of training that usually requires an advanced degree and often a state license. Many amateur gardeners also attain a high level of experience from extensive hours working in their own gardens, through casual study or Master Gardener Programs offered by the American Horticultural Society. Garden owners have shown an increasing interest in garden design during the late twentieth century, both as enthusiasts of gardening as a hobby, as well as an expansion in the use of professional garden designers. Sissinghurst, one of the most admired gardens made in the twentieth century, was designed by its owners: Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West.

About the Author:

Charles Adams Platt (October 16, 1861 – September 12, 1933) was a prominent landscape gardener and architect of the "American Renaissance" movement. Though his garden designs were to complement his domestic architecture, his training was as an artist of landscapes, first at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Académie Julian with Gustave Boulanger and with Jules Joseph Lefebvre

Platt designed a grand country estate for Edith Rockefeller McCormick at "Villa Turicum" in Lake Forest, Illinois (1912, demolished). In 1907 he designed a townhouse for Sara Delano Roosevelt on East 65th Street in New York. Eleanor Roosevelt called Platt "an architect of great taste" who with the townhouse had "made the most of every inch of space." The MIT Endicott House in Dedham, Massachusetts is a Platt-designed mansion built for H. Wendell Endicott in 1934, in use today as a conference center for Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Beginning in 1906, Platt also began to receive numerous commissions from the estate of Vincent Astor. Platt turned to professional help in surveying large-scale projects from the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted. He received detailed planting plans to fill his borders from Ellen Biddle Shipman, whom he had come to know through her gardening at Cornish and whom he had instructed in presentation drawings by a draftsman from his own office, then sent to Grosse Pointe, Michigan to plant one of his designs. The Italian Renaissance styled Russell A. Alger House, at 32 Lakeshore Drive, designed by Charles A. Platt now serves as the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. His more visible public commissions include the Italianate palazzo he designed for the Smithsonian Institute's Freer Gallery of Art (1918) in Washington, D.C. and the campuses of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1822 and 1927), Connecticut College, Deerfield Academy, and Phillips Academy Andover, where he designed the chapel and library and their settings. In 1993 Platt's Italian Gardens was reissued with additional photographs by Platt and an introductory overview by Keith N. Morgan, whose research into Platt's career generated new interest in Platt. Throughout his life, Platt maintained his house and garden in Cornish, New Hampshire, and an office and residence in Manhattan. With his second wife, Eleanor Hardy Bunker, whom Platt married in 1893, Platt had five children. Among the children were William (1897-1984) and Geoffrey (1905-1985), who followed in their father's footsteps and practiced architecture in New York City. Platt died in Cornish, New Hampshire at the age of 72. His drawings and archives, including the original glass plate negatives for "Italian Gardens" are held by the Department of Drawings & Archives in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. At the end of the century some of Platt's surviving gardens in their full maturity were opened to the public including the spectacular gardens at the Gwinn Estate in Cleveland, Ohio (designed with Warren Manning and Ellen Biddle Shipman).

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