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The Oxford Dictionary of Architecture . Edited by Curl James Stevens and Wilson Susan , 3rd edn. 240mm. Pp xxiii + 1,017, more than 260 b&w ills. Oxford University Press , Oxford , 2015. ISBN 9780199674985 . £45 (hbk).
Reviews
Curl's Dictionary was first published in 1999: sixteen years on, the third edition is substantially enlarged and even more useful. Some of the credit must go to his co-author, Dr Susan Wilson, who has contributed new entries on landscape architecture. Battle-gardens and snail-mounts are now elucidated, alongside Bengal cottage and zecca.
The sheer quantity of entries is remarkable. They cover technical terms (often of a profound obscurity), stylistic handles, construction methods, building types, materials, symbols and a very wide range indeed of biographical entries. A random test of five middling or obscure seventeenth-century English architects and masons scored 100 per cent - each one was written up. Some Fellows may be familiar with most of the entries, but few will fail to make new discoveries. A margin-draft is the 'dressed band the width of a chisel all around the face of an ashlar-block, contrasting...