Ed Kluz — Monuments Private View 13 October 6-9pm Exhibition 14 - 31 October 2015 John Martin Gallery 38 Albemarle Street T +44 (0)20 7499 1314 Mon-Fri 10-6 London, W1S 4JG
[email protected] Sat 10-2 — Bach-y-Graig Collage on Paper, 31½ x 43½ ins £4,000 Bach-y-Graig is thought to have been the first brick built building in Wales. The house was built in 1567 for Sir Richard Clough, Sir Thomas Gresham’s representative in Antwerp. Clough employed a Flemish architect to create a house in the Renaissance style of the Netherlands. Owner of the near- by Nantlys Hall, Phillip Pennant, described Bach-yGraig as a singular house, which consisted of ‘ a mansion of three sides, enclosing a square court. The first consists of a vast hall and parlour: the rest of it rises into six wonderful stories, including the cupola; and forms from the second floor the figure of a pyramid: the rooms are small and inconvenient.’ By 1774, when the well-known lexicog- rapher, critic and essayist Dr Samuel Johnson visited the house, it was in decline and he wrote in his diary of its missing floors and stopped up windows. The main house at Bach-y-Graig was then demolished at some point between 1795 and 1817, when Clough’s descendant Mrs Thrale married an Italian music master called Piozzi. Together they built a new mansion, Brynbella - combining their Welsh and Italian ancestry in the name. A wrought-iron weathervane from Bach-y-Graig is thought to have been re-used at Brynbella’s stables.