Here’s a small selection of favourites from the many hundreds of Liz Mathews’ house portraits and architectural studies. You’ll see a huge variety of different subjects, some made in terracotta like the bricks, some in stoneware – from a grand Queen Anne mansion to a traditional croft, with Georgian terraced houses and contemporary bungalows, mock-Tudor semis and Victorian vicarages, each one with its unique character.
This enchanting double-fronted London house has an ionic pillared door-case and a fine parapet balustrade. Warmly lit interiors add to the welcoming impression.
A wonderful Irish Arts & Crafts house, with decorative tile-work, swag panelling and much quirky detailing.South side of the same Arts & Crafts house, showing its charming veranda, and the light-filled glass garden room. (Please see Portraits on paper for more views of this lovely house.)A beautiful family home, set in an idyllic garden.This is one of my all-time favourite commissions – an enchanting house, sensitively restored, in a ravishing garden.This beautifully proportioned stone mill house has its own bridge and dovecote.Calm Regency elegance with a stone porch.The graceful facade of a Cambridgeshire house with literary associations…… and its garden front, the setting for ‘Tom’s Midnight Garden’. The pair of portraits were made to stand back-to-back to give both aspects of this lovely house.Wonderful colours in the red vine complement the garden front of this charming house.Thatch and ancient brick on this lovely cottage, embraced by its flowering garden.Classic York brickwork on a pretty terraced house with a side passage to its flowery back yard.A charming lattice-windowed cottage with beautiful greenery.Wisteria climbs across the noble archway of this elegant house.A time-line of one family’s homes, from city mews to country house – shown individually below:No 1: a compact elegant London mews house with dark blue shutters and window-box garden;No 2: a London terraced family house with detailed brickwork and classic features;No 3: a charming stone cottage with roses beside the door;No 4: Black and white arts and crafts elegance with stained glass and wisteria;No 5: the crowning glory – brick mansion with stone facings and a classical porch, half-timbered gables and a wonderfully complex roof-scape – a very harmonious arrangement of parts.
A beautifully proportioned Queen Anne house
This shining house in Philadelphia USA was built in 1925 from a sparkling mica-bearing stone
A Georgian house and its barn with carriageway in between, shown separately below:… on the house a magnificent climbing magnolia graces the facade …… and the stone-stepped barn faces a charming vegetable garden.Newly restored, this lovely house was designed by Voysey, and has characteristic flourishes.A Lake District cottage with a similar gable, and a beautiful garden.An immaculate Arts & Crafts house in North London.A house with a fine wisteria where Charles Lamb once lived.A Hebridean log cabin of beloved memory, built from Norwegian wood on a stone base.A traditional Hebridean blackhouseA childhood home in Moffat, Scotland, remembered as it was one summer in the 1960’s.Wisbech’s elegant Town Hall, now re-purposed, with trompe l’oeil view through the arch.Stone house with gables and stonework hood-moulding on the windowsA lovely tile-hung brick house with gables and half-timberingPeckover House, Wisbech’s National Trust property – with its beautiful old wisteria– and another view of Peckover House, as it was when brand new, with pristine brickwork and no foliage. Made to commission from a contemporary engraving – inscription on reverse shown below:
Two town houses, one on Wisbech’s Crescent, one in an East London square
The Guildhall, King’s Lynn with its elegant chequered diaper workAnother log cabin, this time in Switzerland, complete with snow. These log cabins are unusual examples of the original building material not being reflected in the portrait making material.The Manor House, with beautiful brickwork – and another view below …… here’s the west front of the same Manor House, with an entirely different character.Cottage with small bay window and roses round the doorThe Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel – a complex facade articulating a many-purposed interior; note the traceried chapel window and entrance loggia/colonnade.Heacham Church – another architecturally complex facade, reflecting the church’s history.A barn in King’s Lynn with beautiful brick and stone-work– and another extraordinary church, this portrait commissioned to celebrate a wedding.Traditional small Greek village house, now a seaside holiday homeA house on the village greenVillage house with beautiful columned door-case and shuttersThe Brewery, with trompe l’oeil view through to the yardManor House with superb brickwork and half-cupola door-caseStone house with timber balustrade and claddingQuaker meeting house, 1854Irish Coastguard Cottages with inscription on reverse shown belowA mock-Tudor house with wonderful brickworkFarmhouse with barn and trompe l’oeil viewThe Ice House, Holland Park, London, now an art gallery in the parkBrick cottage with dormer windows and pantiles, and a quirky buttressGarden front of Norfolk houseNorth Norfolk coast house, with characteristic flint wallsA charming 1930’s factory in East AngliaCambridgeshire house, with roses on its wrought-iron porch; its coach house shown below:The Coach House Antiques, with enchanting windows and antique stone flower-troughsThe Castle, Wisbech – actually a Regency villa – with imposing detached gateway
Two portraits of a York house, before and after shutters, and in different seasons
Two flower-adorned York houses – one garden front, the other the front garden.
Kingfisher Cottage in YorkshireWhite house with beautiful tiled roofA characterful half-timbered 1930’s London houseA pair of fine bay-windowed semi-detached houses with enchanting French turreted roofAn interesting contemporary house in Germany, like a composition of blocksThis house has beautiful roofs and chimneys, as well as unusual windows
A selection of much-loved ‘ordinary’ houses that proved to be good subjects.
A beautiful riverside terrace in a unified composition – with some window-tax blanksThe old fire-station, WisbechThis lovely house was once a vicarage, now a small hospitalA house with beautiful brickwork and perfect proportions
Two faces of one house – front and side views
A cottage down a flowery laneA vicarage with mullioned windows and wonderful decorative brickwork in the gables
Two more London hospitals in the East End, the Queen Elizabeth and the Royal London Hospital’s Garden House
And three of our potteries: Rus in Urbe at Gabriel’s Wharf, Whitechapel Pottery, and The Wisbech Pottery, an old stable. For Potters’ Yard, where we are now, see the Contact page
This lovely house seems to have a machicolated oriel window overhanging the front doorIM000166.JPG
A church, a bank and a London restaurant – each commissioned for special occasions
A tile-hung brick house with leaded windowsThis house’s conservatory echoes its shape and fits it so well it couldn’t be left off the portraitSome ‘ordinary’ much-loved homesIM000157.JPG
A town house, a seaside house, a bungalow, a pub and a cottage – all adorned with flowers
Norfolk cottage with a trompe l’oeil glimpse of garden through its archway– and Church House, perhaps my all-time favourite – for which I also made the house-name-plate
Potters' Yard house portraits 