Visualisations of the Transatlantic Atlantic Design Network The forty-year correspondence of Jefferson, Soane, and Cosway had wider consequences: they facilitated international networks that sidestepped existing aristocratic ones, gave agency to the voices and initiatives of women, and advanced professional and stylistic developments of architecture on both sides of the Atlantic. Direct examples of the influence of correspondence are the fact that Cosway was responsible for the dissemination of privately published texts by Jefferson and Soane. Although Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) was printed in London, Cosway introduced members of her circle to the text. Similarly, she was responsible for introducing Soane’s Museum to her acquaintances in Italy, noting in a letter to the architect that, “your beautiful book has been admired all over Milan & architects have taken translations of great part of it” (SJSM, III.C.4, no. 36). To better understand the operations and potential architectural and epistemological implications of the Transatlantic Design Network, several diagrammatic investigations were constructed. For example, the network map below illustrates the connections between approximately 200 figures. Jefferson, Soane, and Cosway served as the generative nodes for this map and they are linked to other members of the network through various strands of association: immediate correspondence, genealogy and marriage, mentorship, patronage, and communal membership in other formal networks such as the London-based Royal Society, Royal Society of the Arts, and Royal Academy and the United States- based American Philosophical Society, Academy of Fine Arts, and Columbian Institute. Here, it is important to note that these organisations represent a very selective sampling: Pevsner identified more than 100 artistic academics in Europe during the late 1790s (1973: 141-143). The organisations used for the Transatlantic Design Network study and subsequent visualisations were selected as six organisations, three from England and three from the United States, that were most active in reference to design-related publications or exhibitions and these organisations also had the largest concentrations of practicing designers. The latter distinction of ‘practicing’ verses ‘professional’ architect or artist was used to cast a wider net since the nascent United States lacked both the educational infrastructure and established systems of apprenticeship to support formal architectural training and the promise of steady commissions to support the pursuits of the arts as a full time profession. Painter John Trumbull, now noted for the creation of an extensive graphic record of America’s founding fathers and key moments in the nation’s developing history, noted in his Autobiography that he was reluctant to return from Europe to America in the 1780s because he feared there would be little work: “You see, sir, that my future movement depend entirely upon my reception in America, and as that shall be cordial or cold, I am to decide whether to abandon my country or my profession”. (1841:160) As evidenced by the map, active members of the network were also connected to selected writers and architects who, although departed, were influential in the discourses on design within the network. The diagram is divided horizontally by travel: North Americans on the far left and Europeans on the far right. The placement of individual figures within the longitude of the diagram was dependent on the individual’s travel within their respective nation and continent as well as any travels across the Atlantic Ocean. Expatriates are identified in the centre of the map. 4
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Danielle Willkens
4 An interactive version of this map can, too, be found online (http://www. archdsw.com/transatlantic-design-network-1768-1836.html)
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