William Halfpenny - Publications

Publications

His books deal almost entirely with domestic architecture, and especially with country houses in the neo-Gothic and Chinoiserie fashions which were so greatly in vogue in the middle of the 18th century. His most important publications, from the point of view of their effect upon taste, were:

• New Designs for Chinese Temples, in four parts (1750–52)
• Rural Architecture in the Chinese Taste (1750–1752). This book is believed to have introduced the word "gazebo" to the English language.
• Rural Architecture in the Gothic Taste (1752)
• Chinese and Gothic Architecture Properly Ornamented (1752)

These four books were produced in collaboration with his son John Halfpenny. New Designs for Chinese Temples is a volume of some significance in the history of furniture, since, having been published some years before the books of Thomas Chippendale and Sir William Chambers, it disproves the statement so often made that those designers introduced the Chinese taste into Britain. Halfpenny states distinctly that "the Chinese manner" had been "already introduced here with success."

Halfpenny's books were often the source for design details in 18th-century American houses as well, including Mount Clare in Baltimore County, Maryland, and the Chase-Lloyd House in Annapolis, Maryland.