{"product_id":"9780715656402-gentle-windows","title":"Gentle Windows","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eHomes of the Female Imagination\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eBlending memoir, history and cultural criticism, \u003cem\u003eGentle Windows\u003c\/em\u003e explores the homes and spaces of single women as expressions of identity rather than expectation. Alice Maddicott draws on family history, 'spinsters' from history and women artists to examine what women’s spaces reveal when freed from conventional social and family pressures. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat kind of homes and work spaces do women make as expressions of who they are, when able to live alone? An immersive, engaging and evocative journey through research, travel and family memoir, \u003cem\u003eGentle Windows \u003c\/em\u003eexplores how women create and curate the spaces around theme when free of societal and familial expectations?\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn her first book,\u003cem\u003e Tender Maps,\u003c\/em\u003e Alice Maddicott considered travel as a search for feeling and atmosphere. Returning to the home, \u003cem\u003eGentle Windows\u003c\/em\u003e blends social history with family history, art with literature to explore what women’s spaces look like, without the conventional pressures of family – and what this tells us about society. Alice’s grandmother - swimmer, actress and orphan -  was raised communally by women and as Alice retraces her grandmother's steps through the Twentieth Century she encounters A La Ronde, a 16-sided cottage built by two sisters after a Grand Tour of Europe and bequeathed for the use of single women alone. She considers other artists, outsiders and pioneers, through history, like Ithell Colquhoun, Elsie de Wolfe and Hope Bourne. She takes us back to meet Manhattan interior designers at the turn of the century to as well as teenage girls painting murals in Paris and we travel through cities and wild landscapes to meet women living alone in attics, cottages, caravans and studios - from Scotland to Devon, Paris to New York.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith curiosity, playfulness and honesty Maddicott opens the window to the joys \u0026amp; possibilities of unconvential living.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":58453444854134,"sku":"9780715656402","price":14.49,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_42698676_2b9c607c-254f-4d84-a097-5247baef0830.jpg?v=1787286174","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9780715656402-gentle-windows","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}