The Intimacies of George Shaw (1810–76): Diaries and Letters of a Gothic Architect, Antiquary, and Forger

Working for his family’s woollen mills as a teenager, in the 1840s George Shaw (1810–76) was operating a sizeable architectural practice in Uppermill. Building and reworking churches and homes, his firm also created painted glass, cast-iron work, and furniture.
This book provides an important new account of Shaw’s formative years as an architect and antiquary by presenting extensive edited extracts from his diaries and correspondence. Shaw’s letters reveal how he leveraged antiquarian knowledge to produce fake ‘Tudor’ furniture sold as genuinely ancient ‘relics’ to Northern aristocrats.