moment, putting creativity to the test. It requires concentration and thinking, and then finding a way to represent that thinking. It is a magical moment, when a completely invisible, interior process emerges as a set of lines on a surface. Though the roles and subjects of design drawings in different eras vary enormously, crude early sketches can be found during each historical period. It should be stressed that in the 17th century, design drawings were infrequent; Humphry Repton, for example, is said never to have drawn plans. But we do find early examples of barebones drawings, some of them annotated to make them readable as well as to make the designer’s intention clear to other people. Although the poet William Wordsworth was not a landscaper, he was commissioned to come up with ideas for a winter garden and annotated his sketch extensively. A sketch can be very spare but still convey one overriding idea; indeed, presenting the main design concept in a simple form is what these early sketches do best. For example, in this outline of a design for John Danvers’s house from 1691, a space is shaped into an oval through the location of trees. In a letter to George John Legh in 1797, Repton sketched the possible design for a space at an intersection of roads in a small town. Two sketches by poet and garden designer Alexander Pope show us alternative treatments
William Wordsworth, signed letter to Lady Beaumont, 23 December 1806. Ink on paper. This informal plan of a winter garden at Coleorton Hall, the seat of Sir George Beaumont in Leicestershire, England, was embedded in a letter sent to Lady Beaumont. The sonnet was addressed to her as well.
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Chapter 3 Notebooks, Early Sketches and Late Drawings