ARTISANS AND ARCHITECTS By the sameauthor HOMES FIT FOR HEROES: The Politics and Architecture of Early State Housing in Britain Artisans and Architects The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought Mark Swenarton M MACMILLAN PRESS ©Mark Swenarton 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-46460-1 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WClE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1989 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Swenarton, Mark Artisans and architects: the Ruskinian tradition in architectural thought. 1. Ruskin, John-Contributions in architecture 2. Architecture, Modern- 19th century 3. Architecture, Modern- 20th century I. Title 720.92'4 NA2599.8.R87 ISBN 978-1-349-19650-0 ISBN 978-1-349-19648-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19648-7 To the memory of Maggie Scruton Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xiii Introduction xv 1 Ruskin and 'The Nature of Gothic' 1 Ruskin and German Romantic Thought - Ruskin's Intellectual Development up to 1848- The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice - Gothic and the Liberty of the Workman 2 Philip Webb: Architecture and Socialism in the 1880s 32 The Architect of the Pre-Raphaelite Group - Artistic Buildings - Webb and the Socialist Movement- Webb's Architectural and Socialist Thought 3 The Architectural Theory of William Morris 61 Oxford Origins of Morris's Thought - Morris's Architectural Thought before 1883- Socialism and Marxism - 'Look back! Look back!' 4 W. R. Lethaby and the Fabians 96 Lethaby's Intellectual Development up to 1894- Fabianism and Technical Education - The Central School of Arts and Crafts - The School of Building 5 Raymond Unwin: The Education of an Urbanist 126 The Impact of Edward Carpenter - Unwin and the Northern Socialist Movement - The Architecture of Social Experiments - Art and the City viii Contents 6 A. J. Penty and the Building Guilds 167 The Restoration of the GildSystem- Guild Socialism - The Building Guilds 7 Ruskin and the Modems 189 Conclusion 201 Notes and References 206 Index 232 List of Illustrations 1.1 The Author of Modem Painters': portrait ofJohnRuskin 2 by George Richmond (1843)[Courtesy of the Brantwood Trust, Coniston] 1.2 John Ruskin: Byzantine capitals, concave group (from 11 The Stones of Venice II 1853) 1.3 John Ruskin: South transept, Rouen cathedral (1854) 20 [Courtesy of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge] 1.4 John Ruskin: Gothic windows of the Fourth Order (from 23 The Stonesof Venice II 1853) 1.5 John Ruskin: West porch, Rouen cathedral [Courtesy of 28 the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow] 2.1 Philip Webb, portrait by C. F. Murray (1873) [Courtesy 34 of the National Portrait Gallery] 2.2 Philip Webb: house for G. F. Boyce, Glebe Place, Chelsea 36 (1868), street front 2.3 Philip Webb: house for G. F. Boyce, Chelsea (1868), 37 dining-room 2.4 Philip Webb: 'Red Barns', Redcar (1868), street front 44 2.5 Philip Webb: 'Four Gables', Brampton (1876), garden 45 front 2.6 Philip Webb: 'Clouds', East Knoyle (1876), south front 47 [Courtesy of B. T. Batsford Ltd] 2.7 Philip Webb: the 'Jubilee Monument' (1886) [Courtesy 58 of the RIBA Drawings Collection] 3.1 William Morris, photographed by Frederick Hollyer 62 (1887) [Courtesyof the William Morris Gallery, Waltham- stow] 3.2 Morris & Company showroom, 449Oxford Street [Cour- 69 tesy of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow] 3.3 The Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist League: photo- 79 graph by Frederick Hollyer (1885) [Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum] 3.4 E. Burne-lones: frontispiece drawing for William Mor- 90 ris's A Dream ofJohn Ball (1888) [Courtesy of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow] x List of Illustrations 4.1 Portrait plaque of W. R. Lethaby as Master of the 98 Art Workers' Guild (1911) [Courtesy of the British Architectural Library] 4.2 W. R. Lethaby and H. Swainson: the vaulting system 104 of Santa Sophia (from The Church of Sancta Sophia, 1894) 4.3 W. R. Lethaby, H. Wilson, R. W. S. Weir, H. Ricardo, 106 F. W. Troup, S. Lee and C. Whall: Liverpool Cathedral Competition entry (1902) (montage) [Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum] 4.4 Central School of Arts and Crafts, London: the silver- 116 smiths' room (1911) [Courtesy of The Greater London Record Office] 4.5 School of Building, Brixton: construction of full-scale 122 cottage in the Great Hall (1911) [Courtesy of The Greater London Record Office] 5.1 Raymond Unwin, from a family photograph (1898) 128 [Courtesy of the First Garden City Heritage Museum, Letchworth] 5.2 The Simple Life: Edward Carpenter and friends outside 130 the cottage at Millthorpe in the 1890s [Courtesy of the Director of Libraries and Information Services, Sheffield City Libraries] 5.3 Parker and Unwin: design for a cottage for the Unwins, 148 Chapel-en-Ie-Frith (1897)/ plans (from The Art of Building a Home, 1901) 5.4 Parker and Unwin: design for a cottage for the Unwins, 149 Chapel-en-Ie-Frith (1897)/ interior perspective (from The Art of Building a Home, 1901) 5.5 Parker and Unwin: design for a quadrangle of cottages 154 (1898-99)/ perspective of quadrangle (from The Art of Building a Home, 1901) 5.6 Parker and Unwin: design for a quadrangle of cottages 155 (1898-99)/ plans of communal units (from The Art of Building a Home, 1901) 5.7 Parker and Unwin: design for a quadrangle of artisans/ 159 cottages, plans of dwellings and communal units (from Cottage Plans and Common Sense, 1902) 6.1 A. J. Penty, photographed c.1914 [Courtesy of Michael 168 Penty] List of Illustrations xi 6.2 A. J. Penty (for Parker and Unwin): the twin entrance 172 buildings to Hampstead Garden Suburb (1909) (from R. Unwin, Town Planning in Practice, 1909) 6.3 London Guild of Builders: housing at the Higham Hill 184 estate, Walthamstow (1920) 7.1 Le Corbusier: Ducal Palace, Venice, window detail (1907) 193 [Courtesy of the Fondation le Corbusier, Paris] Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many individuals who have helped in various ways with this work, including John Brandon-Jones, Bridie Diamond and Bruce Hanson, David Dunster, Brigid Grafton Green, Alan and Hilary Graham, Sheila Kirk, Mervyn Miller, Francis Milsom, Michael Penty, Ruth Richardson, Godfrey Rubens, Sir John Summerson, David Thistlewood, F. M. L. Thompson, William Vaughan and above all Martin O'Doherty and Adrian Forty. I should also like to thank collectively the staff of the libraries and archives that I consulted. The publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from the Twenty-Seven Foundation. Introduction This book is a study of what has been arguably the major British contribution to architectural thought in the past 150 years: the tradition based on the chapter entitled 'The Nature of Gothic' in Ruskin's Stones of Venice of 1853. This way of thinking about architecture was most fully expounded by William Morris in the 1880s, and was further developed by associates and disciples of Ruskin and Morris - including Philip Webb, W. R. Lethaby, Raymond Unwin and A. J. Penty - in the period up to the First World War. The central notion in this tradition was that architecture should be the expression of the character of the worker. Gothic was seen as the great exemplar from the past of an architecture in which the worker had been not a 'slave', but a free artist, able to put his soul and feelings into the work. Against the division of labour involved in industrial production, thinkers of this persuasion sought to reunite the 'heart' with the 'hand', and regarded medieval guilds as models of integrated labour. This idea led directly to the building guild experiment of the early 1920s, an episode which marked both the culmination and, in the event, the termination of this tradition. Why should we be interested in the Ruskinian tradition today? One obvious consideration is the crisis into which architecture has been thrown by the collapse of modernism. After fifty years' intellectual hegemony, and at least thirty years' dominance over the practice of architecture, modernism, or the 'Modem Movement' as it was called when still a credo, became in the 1970s subject to general review and quite frequent attack. If nothing else, this has focused historical attention on to strands and traditions in architecture other than modernism and makes the Ruskinian tradition an obvious candidate for reappraisal - all the more so because hitherto no full-scale historical study of it has been made.' There are in addition more specific reasons for a reappraisal of the Ruskinian tradition. During the period of political consensus that lasted roughly from the Second World War to the oil crisis of 1973, the relationship between architecture and social democracy was not generally seen as problematic within western architectural thought. To a substantial extent architectural practice and education xvi Introduction was oriented around the welfare state and the provision of social services, in the form of housing, hospitals, schools and so on. But in the 1970s in a number of western countries there emerged a powerful demand for the 'rolling back' of the welfare state, which brought into question the assumption that architecture should be directed to social welfare goals .