Dimensions
171 x 175 x 35mm
Dr. Johnson's Doorknob, taken from her Liz Workman's National Heritage Revisited series published in England in 2002, breathes new life into the frozen dioramas and motionless snapshots typical of celebrated historic houses.
Each of the nine chapters in this charming slipcased package is an anthology in itself, a collection of photographs focusing on commonly overlooked domestic features of "great" men's homes: there are rugs belonging to William Morris; door handles and banisters from the houses of Charles Dickens and George Washington; curtains from the Duke of Wellington's Apsley House; and chairs once sat on by Keats, Darwin, or Thomas Jefferson.
All too often, museums dedicated to the life of a well known figure focus visitors attention on details specific to their life's work: Keats writing desk, or the phrenology head in Freud's study. But from the chairs in the Dickens House to the crockery in John Soane's Pitshanger Manor, mantelpieces in Darwin's Down House in Kent, and the skirting boards in the William Morris Gallery, Liz Workman has turned an ironic eye on some of the most important historic homes in England and America and challenged our perceptions of the houses themselves, and of their famous inhabitants, along the way.
