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The Arlington Baths Club – Talk: The Alhambra and Owen Jones

Friday 13 March, 2026 7 p.m.

The Arlington Baths Club, 61 Arlington Street, Glasgow G3 6DT

An illustrated talk on how Islamic architecture and design inspired the 19th century architecture of the Arlington Baths Club.

What inspired the architecture of the Arlington Baths Club?

The architect, designer and educator Owen Jones was a hugely influential figure in Victorian design. Before his book The Grammar of Ornament became a bestseller, he published a beautifully illustrated book on The Alhambra in Spain, which popularized Islamic architecture and design throughout Victorian Britain. The style was used for smoking rooms, billiard rooms, swimming pools and Turkish baths.

This illustrated lecture by Dr Ailsa Boyd will look at the Arlington Baths Club, in particular the Turkish room (added 1875), in the wider context of the Victorians’ love for the exotic, and Jones’s belief that good design was necessary for a healthy society.

About the speaker

Dr Ailsa Boyd is an independent writer, lecturer and curator of 19th century art, design and literature, and member of the Arlington.

Free – register at Eventbite

Image credit

Close-up from ‘Detail of an Arch, Portico of the Court of the Lions’ in Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of The Alhambra, by Owen Jones, chromolithographs, 1836 © University of Glasgow, Sp Coll RX 66

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